Silver's Good Enough for Me
by isingthereforeiam
Summary: Lucy Pritchard had never had much time for her cousin Eleanor. Pre-movie until Eleanor gets thrown into the oven. Sweenett, through and through. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter One: The Lily and the Pinecone

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the characters herewith.

**Author's Note:** This story follows the characters pre-movie until Eleanor gets thrown into the oven. Chapter one of however many it takes to finish the story. Sweenett, all the way through.

**Silver's Good Enough For Me**

Jessica

**Chapter One: The Lily and the Pinecone**

Lucy Pritchard had never liked her cousin very much. They had been tutored together by the same man, in the same house, for most of their childhoods and teenage years. They had always been polite, as custom dictated, but never friends. No, pretty golden-haired Lucy had never had much time for Eleanor Pearce, her mother's sister's only daughter. She had heard it said that she and Eleanor were a pair of beauties, but Lucy had never considered red hair to be a mark of beauty. And red-haired Eleanor was, the product of her British mother and a Spanish tailor who died soon after the little girl was weaned. The mother had reverted back to her maiden name, changing her daughter's with it, for fear that a Spanish last name might do them some disadvantages in xenophobic London. She and her little daughter had returned to the family home in Essex before being invited to live with the Pritchards when Eleanor was eight. In this way the golden Pritchard girl and the coppery Pearce girl became acquainted.

Initially, Lucy had been horrified at her cousin's deportment, always swinging around the stair banister and speaking quite out of turn. Too, Eleanor was infuriatingly smart and both girls were locked in constant competition in the schoolroom. One was always trying to outdo the other, much to the amusement of the tutor, Mr. Bath.

For her own part, Eleanor Pearce had never been one to contemplate her reflection. She was beautiful, according to many sources, and it warmed her soul to hear it when she had such a perfect golden beauty for a cousin. Lucy was admired by all for her gentle soul and yellow hair. Eleanor was darker, her face heart-shaped, her eyebrows strong. She took the time, as she got older, to pluck them into dark arches, lending her face an air of insouciance that her manners, though grown more demure, still displayed. Her red hair often escaped its orderly braids and twists in eccentric curls, and she was forever pinning this or that strand back into place. Lucy never had that problem, no. Not golden Lucy, whose hair was fine as spun silk, thick as waves of wheat, whose hair always stayed in its low loop. They would always be unequal.

"Nellie, get away from the mirror!"

Eleanor snapped out of her thoughts at the sound of her cousin's voice. She turned her head to look at the girl. At seventeen Lucy Pritchard was ever more beautiful, dressed in a gown of pale rose with her yellow hair left loose. She looked like an angel just standing on the stairs. A shaft of sunlight painted half of her in its glow. Lucky Lucy. "Mr. Bath is here and Mother will scold if we're late."

Eleanor took one last glance at herself in the hallway mirror, straightened her hair, and hurried off. Her aunt had a sharp tongue, and Eleanor often bore the brunt of it when she and Lucy got into mischief since golden Lucy could do no wrong. She went quickly down the steps, rather louder than she had intended, her dress pulled hastily out of her way.

She could see her reflection in the mirrored walls of the hallway as she passed through; mirror, marble, mirror, marble, flashes of herself going by. She turned her head to observe herself. She looked pretty, as pretty as Lucy. Her dress wasn't pale or angelic; rather she preferred jewel tones and somber colors, to set her pale skin off to advantage. No matter what Lucy thought of her, Eleanor was aware of herself as a woman. Today she was wearing a dusty green dress, cinched tightly to show off her tiny waist, her breasts pushed high. In deference to propriety she had added a lace collar, but it hadn't stayed and so she had abandoned it. Her hair was pulled back to cascade down her back in curls, curls that had taken hours and much frustration.

"Good afternoon, Miss Eleanor," the tutor said as she swept into the room, disturbing Lucy's neat pile of quills.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Bath," Eleanor said, giving him a slight curtsey as she'd been taught to do. She plucked a quill from Lucy's pile and they settled into their lessons: math, spelling, catechism, geography, history, French. Education was her family's vanity, at least with the Pritchards. If they could not be aristocracy (and Eleanor certainly could not, what with her widowed mother and her Spanish blood), they could at least act like it. The Pritchard house was large and well-appointed, with stables and a courtyard. Both Eleanor and Lucy were proficient horsewomen and while Eleanor certainly enjoyed it more, Lucy liked to display herself on her sidesiddle along Rotten Row just as often. Eleanor preferred to risk her mother and her aunt's fury and gallop astride through as many muddy fields as she could. Typical, really, of a tomboy of the day. Her mother despaired, her aunt tutted, her cousin mocked.

All of this changed one day when_ he_ came to the house. The young barber with the black eyes and black hair. He had startled her on the stair; she was sneaking bonbons from the trays laid out in the sitting room and had dropped them all with a gasp when she saw him step into the house. He had smiled, a bright, open smile, and said, "Excuse me, miss, I didn't intend to make your drop those." And he had gathered them all for her, putting them into her hands with an apologetic, "I suppose those won't be good anymore, sorry, miss."

"Who are you?" Eleanor managed at last, sounding rather shriller than she'd intended.

He looked momentarily surprised. "Benjamin Barker. At your service, miss." When she didn't react, he added, "I'm here for Miss Lucy?"

"Oh! Uh, yes!" Eleanor shook herself. "I'm sorry, my cousin. I'll... go get her, shall I?" And she took herself up the stairs in a hurry, dazed. Here for Lucy?

"Lucy!" she said in a loud whisper, leaning into her cousin's room. "There's a young man here for you!"

Lucy turned from her mirror, smiling delightedly. "Is it Benjamin?" She looked ecstatic.

"Er, yes," Eleanor said. "Who is he?"

"A suitor!" Lucy said, excitedly grabbing her cousin's hands. "Oh, Nell, do I look beautiful?"

Eleanor frowned. Everyone told her that all the time. "Of course," she said, a little brusquely. "Why isn't Aunt here? You should be chaperoned."

Lucy smiled. "I don't care," she said simply, and left her red-headed cousin to hang over the banister and wonder jealously how she had managed to get such a nice young man to visit her without a chaperone. Surely he was more of a gentleman than that.

The sound of a delighted shriek and contented sigh from the floor below made her think that maybe he was not. She felt a little thrill and thought too that she would like that just as much.

Lucy had everything, she reflected bitterly as she went to throw the bonbons out her window into the garden. Pale skin, golden hair, blue eyes... and here she was, her first cousin, as different as a lily from a pinecone. No matter how long she walked in the sun, her hair never lightened from its reddish shade. She ended up brown as a nut, which forced her aunt to keep her in the house for two weeks until she was back to her sugar-white self. Lucy never set foot in the sun unprotected. She always had a bonnet tied prettily over her neat hair, her sweet eyes shaded by cottons and muslins and lace.

Another burst of laughter, his this time, came floating from the garden. Eleanor watched as they came into view, Lucy on his arm like a perfect wife. Her frown relaxed and she took him in greedily. He was lovely, his burnished leather overcoat displaying his fine figure, down to his polished boots. His hair was smooth, his face clean-shaven, his eyes dark, and she liked that. And he was here for Lucy. So she turned away from the sight of them and sat slowly at her small upright piano, her fingers sliding along the keys. Another facet of her lady's education; the piano, and singing. Lucy was miserable at singing, which made Eleanor inwardly exultant, for finally, finally there was something she was best at. Eleanor herself had a talent for the piano and a pure voice, which, while not destined for Bayreuth, was pleasant to listen to and she was often exhorted to sing at gatherings.

She pressed down, a small melody issuing from her fingers. It was simple, not based in any repertoire, just the work of idle hands. She elaborated on it until she grew bored. By then Lucy and Benjamin were gone from the garden and it was quiet. Eleanor sighed, got up, and stood by the window again. The garden was still.

"Miss!"

Eleanor frowned, leaning out the window to see who was calling. She craned her neck to look past the bushes, and there he was.

He was standing below her window, looking up. He waved, once, tentatively. "Hello," Eleanor said, a bit puzzled. "How did you know I was up here?"

"Your music," he answered. "Who are you?"

Eleanor smiled despite herself. "Lucy's cousin."

He smiled back. "I meant your name."

"I know." Eleanor couldn't help leaning over just a touch more; this gown was so becoming on her. She allowed her red curls to fall over a shoulder. "My name is Eleanor. Eleanor Pearce."

He bowed to her, his black eyes dancing. "You're very beautiful." And then he was gone.

Eleanor shut the window as Lucy burst into the room. "He's perfect!" was her first breathless exclamation. "Oh, Nellie, he's perfect for me." She looked rapturous.

Eleanor swallowed her immediate, nauseating flash of jealousy. She smiled thinly, feeling her face drain of color. "That's lovely," she said. "He looks like a nice young man."

"You look pale, Nell, are you all right?" Instantly Lucy was all concern for her cousin, feeling magnanimous in her glow of excitement.

"I'm fine," Eleanor said, rather faintly. "Really. I leaned out the window a little too far and almost fell." She smoothed her hands over her skirts. "So is he going to marry you?"

"Oh, I hope so!" Lucy said, clasping her hands together in a gesture Eleanor found to be soppily romantic. She disapproved.

"I hope he does, and that we have our own house just like this, and that we live happily ever after--"

"Oh, bollocks," Eleanor said, causing Lucy to cover her mouth in ladylike shock. "Happily ever after? You've been reading novels again."

"So have you!" Lucy retorted. "And really, Nell, you shouldn't swear. You sound like a man."

"I don't care," Eleanor said defiantly, but she was hurt. Her cousin's opinion mattered more to her than she cared to admit, and when it wasn't favorable, especially in light of the day's events, she felt it keenly. She wanted to be beautiful and golden and have Benjamin Barker wait on her and make her smile. "And anyway, at least _I _understand that they're just stories. There's no such thing as a novel ending."

Lucy harrumphed and went out of the room, leaving Eleanor to sit heavily down in the window seat and imagine the young man still in the garden below her.

In the next six months, Lucy and Eleanor turned eighteen and Benjamin Barker asked Lucy to be his wife. On that day, when Lucy came bursting into Eleanor's room, startling the red-headed girl out of her reading, displaying a ruby ring, Eleanor thought she had never seen a person so happy in her life. She had been nothing but polite to Benjamin, disregarding a few small indelicacies that included racing him in the main meadow on the Pritchard property, hiding his carved box full of razors when he was distracted with Lucy in some private nook or other, and once, daring him to swing from one side of the brook bordering the Pritchards' pastures and the woods to the other, using only an old rope that had held up a tree swing when she and Lucy were girls. This he had done, obligingly, laughing when she held the rope out of his reach so he could not return. Half of her thought she might just leave him there, out of spite and to punish him just a little for wanting Lucy and not her. But in the end she had relented, swinging the rope back towards him and turning to go as he landed safely. He had been puzzled with her reaction but she had refused to answer any questions concerning it, and in time he dismissed it. Anyway, he had asked Lucy to marry him and she had accepted. Now she wore his ruby ring and plans were being planned.

He noticed Eleanor's wide-eyed look of envy many times and sought to make her feel less so. But she gently refused any courtesies he tried to show her beyond the most proprietary ones, and kept her distance from him. She had fallen violently in love with her cousin's fiance, a bad offense that would make her mother very unhappy and very angry.

But in time, she too had her own suitor. His name was Albert Lovett and he arrived four months before Benjamin and Lucy's wedding. He was thirty-four, sixteen years older than Eleanor and Lucy, a butcher, and comparatively well-off. He was also fat, bald as an egg and sported an impressive mustache that neither girl liked. Eleanor was soon to learn, however, that this was less of a courtship and more of an arrangement. Her mother would not listen to her pleas not to be made to marry so young, pointing out that Lucy was eighteen and Mr. Barker twenty-five and Lucy did not complain. Moreover, he would take her with a small dowry and could provide her a home next to his shop. And so, with tears in her eyes, Eleanor accepted his proposal. Albert took it for maidenly fear, and gave her an emerald ring in honor of their engagement.

That night, Eleanor wept for her lost chance at love. Lucy came in to embrace her, and, feeling desolate, Eleanor accepted, though it was at Lucy that she was angry. Lucky Lucy, golden Lucy, perfect Lucy, who had the perfect man and was proving to her that novel endings did indeed exist. Soon there would be golden babies, Eleanor thought despairingly, and a beautiful home, and visitors and servants and bliss. She could hope for none of that. Albert kept a modest house, though he had already bought her several new dresses. They were finer than the ones she had, and made her look older than her eighteen years. WIth a smile, Albert had pronounced her "quite wifely," and departed. Benjamin and Lucy had four months until their wedding, Eleanor six. Then both girls would be married off and the household would settle into the calm activities of older society.

Lucy and Benjamin were married in May, on a beautiful sunny afternoon in the Pritchard chapel. It was a simple ceremony with a simple dinner afterwards. Eleanor was breathless with exhaustion, having spent the entire morning helping Lucy get ready before managing to get herself into her own gown, this one a deep burgundy like good wine. She piled her hair on top of her head and laced roses from the garden into the mass of curls, She inspected herself closely in the mirror, fighting back the tears she was still able to shed over her lucky cousin's fate. She would not cry today, not today, when she had to prove to the world she was content with her fate and with her cousin's.

She was Lucy's only bridesmaid, and so was on display the entire time. Lucy looked radiant in her ivory gown, her face covered with a gauzy veil, her eyes glowing. Benjamin was similarly radiant, leaning to kiss his new wife with a barely-contained glee that made everyone laugh. Everyone except Eleanor, who managed a smile and a nod when Benjamin glanced her way. She left the wedding supper as quickly as was decent, to go walk in the meadow by the brook and cry the way she needed to.

The music went on faintly behind her, the wedding party dancing and singing like a perfect little vignette. When she was far away enough that she was sure she couldn't be seen, Eleanor let her tears go. It was ugly, a crying that pulled her lips back from her teeth and forced her breath from her in short gasps. She covered her face, heedless of the roses in her hair, which was slowly falling out of its pins anyway.

"Eleanor?"

With a choke, Eleanor looked up, mortified. Her eyes were red, her face streaked with tears, her hair in disarray, she was in no fit state to be seen-- and there was the groom himself, looking perturbed that she should be so unhappy on the happiest day of his life.

"Why are you crying?" He knelt down in front of her. "It's a happy day."

"Why aren't you at the party?" she asked.

"I told them I was going to take a piss," he said jocularly, trying to exercise their former familiarity before this wedding rose up and turned her from a friend into an acquaintance. She couldn't laugh.

"Come on, Nell," he said, taking her chin in his hand. "Smile for me. I'm married."

The last two words made her eyes overflow, but because he had asked her to smile, she did. "You'll break my heart looking like that, you will," he said. "Will you dance with me when we get back?"

Eleanor nodded, attempting to pin her hair back up in some semblance of order. "No," Benjamin said, stopping her hand. "I like it when it's loose. Just leave it." He held out a hand and helped her to her feet. "You go back first. Albert'll be looking for you."

So she did. Eleanor spent the rest of the day dancing and laughing as she was expected to. She did give Benjamin his dance, during which he whispered, "Albert's a lucky man. When you go to him like this on your wedding night you'll shower him in rose petals."

The image of her being undressed and roses tumbling from the folds of her gown and her hair was far too domestic, much too erotic for Eleanor to think of. She blushed as red as her dress and turned her face away, whispering, "Mr. Barker, please."

The dance finished and she gave him the customary curtsey before hurrying back to Albert's side as was expected. He was uncomfortably hot, even in the mild May weather, and didn't want to dance, though he gave his young fiancee his blessing to do whatever she pleased, so long as she remembered the emerald on her finger.

In addition to dancing wildly, Eleanor consumed more champagne that day than was strictly proper, and ended up stumbling back to her room after saying a hasty, unsteady goodbye to her fiance, and fell into her bed with a groan. She didn't even bother unlacing her corset, though it was very tight.

As of this night Lucy would no longer be across the hallway in her room. Eleanor felt a confusing mix of emotions at this fact; for one, she would miss the companionship of a girl her own age, no matter if it wasn't always friendly. For another, now she was the daughter of the house and the next bride, for which she should have been excited. She wasn't, of course. She was vilely, blackly jealous of her lovely cousin, almost sick with it. The accompanying surge of love and bitter disappointment made her retch a little (or perhaps it was the champagne) as she thought of Benjamin Barker, so handsome in his tails and tie, his black hair neatly combed, his lovely angular face clean-shaven. She wished it were him she would be showering with roses on their wedding night. Albert was nice enough, but not an affectionate man by nature, she was discovering. This would be a marriage of convenience. Moreover, she had managed to convince herself that she could make the best of the situation by being a model wife, and was hoping that eventually he'd come 'round to it. She fancied she'd never be as happy as Lucy, not ever, but that seemed to be her lot in life. She was Lucy's dark shade, forever tagging along in somber colors, attempting to be equal and always falling just short. Mostly just by inches, but sometimes by miles, and this was one of those times when she felt separated by a continent from her cousin.

She tried not to think of it. She eased herself up onto her feet, undid her laces, and wriggled out of her gown as best she could without a maid to help. Clad only in her chemise and bloomers, she crawled under her covers, shed a few last tears, and fell asleep.

The house seemed curiously empty without Lucy, though once the wedding was cleared away, plans went into motion for Eleanor's nuptials. She was fitted and re-fitted for a white dress that she thought washed her out but was met with nothing but rapturous praise from her mother, her aunt, Mr. Pritchard, and the maids. "Oh, Miss Eleanor, you look like a queen," the dressmaker gushed, pinning a flounce in place. Eleanor could only observe herself with detachment. Yes, it was the most beautiful dress she had ever owned. Yes, it was ornate and stylish. Yes, she looked very beautiful in it. "Smile," her mother urged her. "You look lovely." Eleanor turned up the corners of her mouth and let them drop when her mother turned away. The dressmaker pinned the veil into her hair and stepped back.

"A proper bride," she said with pride and satisfaction. Eleanor looked up again at herself, and had to pause to take in her reflection. She was a proper bride. She wished Benjamin could see her now, standing at the threshold of a new life.

Eleanor and Albert were married on a murderously hot day in July. Of course the young Barkers were in attendance, Lucy looking lovelier than ever with the added complement of an adoring husband.

"Oh, Nell, you look like a vision," she'd gushed, abandoning Benjamin with her father and clasping her cousin to her chest. She seemed to be different now, gentler, kinder towards Eleanor. "Aren't you happy?" she added, holding Eleanor at arm's length.

Eleanor looked past her at Albert all trussed up and sweating in the early afternoon heat. She turned hooded eyes on her cousin. "Mercy, no," she said, quite dispassionately. "Whatever gave you that impression?" With that she moved out of her cousin's embrace and went to refresh herself with wine before the ceremony. She would need its calming effects not to scream her refusal at the priest. She had agreed, she would bear it, she would make it work.

"Eleanor."

Her name was said on a breath. She looked up from pouring another glass of wine and set it down hastily, before she ruined her dress. "Mr. Barker," she said courteously.

He took her by the shoulders. "You look like an angel," he said admiringly. "Albert's a lucky man."

The memory of the last time he had said that to her made her blush hotly again. "Thank you," she said shortly. She made as if to go past him, but he stopped her.

"Eleanor, would you look at me, please?"

It was asked so sweetly, so genuinely, that she did it almost without thinking. She would have followed him anywhere if he'd asked like that. Brown eye met black and she swallowed the urge to kiss him. "I'm your family," he said gently. "Please call me by my name. You make me feel as though I've offended you simply by being here--"

"No, no!" Eleanor interrupted him, frantic lest he should think she didn't like him. "It's not that. I'm... I'm afraid." This at least was true, and he smiled down at her.

"What's to be afraid of?" he asked her with the assurance of a happy young husband. "You're young, you're beautiful, you're marrying a good man with wealth to his name. What have you to fear?"

Her eyes searched his for a brief moment. Did he suspect her? Perhaps he did, but this was not the day. "I suppose nothing," she said on a breath. "Thank you kindly, Mr Bar--Benjamin."

He smiled at her. "Go," he said. "It's your happy day now."

Eleanor left him standing by the table. She was beginning to think he was terribly naive.

She stood straight as an arrow during the ceremony, said, "I will," clearly and without faltering, and modestly reciprocated the nuptial kiss. The wedding lunch was plentiful, though the dancing was rather subdued in the heat. Albert sweated mightily and before long Eleanor began to feel very uncomfortable in her tight corset. She danced a few dances as was obligatory, and then spent the rest of the day sitting and observing. She watched Lucy and Benjamin dance a few rondos and a minuet or two. She was in the process of downing her fifth glass of wine when a voice said behind her, "Mrs. Lovett, if you're not too tired, might you favor this humble man with a dance?"

She turned around in her chair to see Benjamin, who, with a nod to her new husband, swept the bride off into a dance before she had a chance to protest. It was an energetic quadrille, and Eleanor could only give him looks of astonishment as they galloped through the dance. "What are you doing?" she managed to ask as they were paired again in the dance.

"Trying to make you smile," he answered, swinging her about rather more energetically than was strictly necessary. "You look as though you've been sentenced to hang."

When tears filled her eyes, he pulled her aside from the dance, glancing over at his wife, who was engaged in conversation with her mother. "Eleanor, are you happy?" he asked again. This time he was very serious.

Eleanor stepped back, out of his grip, and crossed her arms. "No one cares whether I say yea or nay, so I won't answer that question." She widened her eyes, willing the tears away. She wanted to collapse into his arms and sob, but that right was Lucy's and had never been hers. So she took two very deep breaths and composed herself. Benjamin watched her transform from a scared young bride to a woman with a will of iron right before his eyes. "It's not my right to ask for comfort. I've made my choice," she said, her voice steady. "He said he's bought a shop, in Fleet Street, and he's naming it Mrs. Lovett's Meat Emporium. In my honor." Those last three words were spoken bitterly. Benjamin considered her disappointment, thinking that a butcher's shop was hardly the kind of romantic gift a young girl dreamed of. He had seen her in several new dresses and a necklace or two, but there was no... he didn't know how to describe it other than to say it was what he and Lucy had. There was no glow on Eleanor's pale face; rather she just looked young and scared and unhappy. He hurt for her.

Taking her on his arm, he whispered, "Great things are ahead for you, Nell. If ever you forget to smile, remember me. I will always hope to see you happy." And with that he led her back to the wedding party, which was winding down. "I wish you luck, wealth, and sons," he said as a parting.

Lucy came to embrace her cousin as people began to leave. "Good luck, Nell," she whispered. "You'll be all right." Eleanor knew she was talking about the night to come, and shut her eyes against that thought. She would make it work. She would be a good wife. And if things ever got really terrible, she could always kill herself.

Albert had ordered a carriage for them and drove her to Fleet Street once she had changed into her traveling dress. She had to admit, he had made a wonderful choice of location: the shop was huge, well-lit with new windows, and a pretty apartment attached to it. There was also a large room with a slanted roof above the shop, large enough to rent out. The downstairs apartment was furnished and clean, and there was a bakehouse down below the shop since it had once been a bakery. Albert used it to cut and store his larger pieces of meat, and presented her with a key to the shop, the bakehouse, and the upstairs. "Welcome home," he said. "I hope you'll be happy here."

Eleanor stood in the doorway, hanging back, observing everything. "Thank you," she said vaguely, and wandered into the attached apartment. It was freshly wall-papered, the windows open to let in the cooler evening air. Overstuffed sofas and chairs filled the room. It was pretty.

She endured the wedding night with a stoicism she would show through most of her life's ensuing problems. In the morning she got up, wincing, and began to cook. Food had been delivered to the house the day of the wedding so that she would have a stocked kitchen. Everyday things such as vegetables would have to be bought, but she would never lack for meat nor chicken, and for that she could be thankful.

She made Albert a big breakfast and ate a plate of her own by herself. There would be no honeymoon like Lucy and Benjamin; Albert needed to get his shop settled and running, and he could waste no time with that. He needed a capable wife to run his house so he could occupy himself with his shop.

In the ensuing year, Eleanor learned to bake and began making modest contributions to her husband's business with little meat pies and small confections. She found she rather liked the alchemy of cooking and grew to enjoy it. She was elbow-deep in flour one Tuesday, dressed in a bright blue gown and white apron (looking very picturesque, if she did say so herself) when the door to the shop opened with a tinkle of the bell.

"Good morning!" she said without looking up from her dough-making. "Mr. Lovett will be with you in one moment."

"I'm not looking for Mr. Lovett," said a female voice, and Eleanor looked up.

"Lucy!" she exclaimed, astonished. "What are you doing here?" Hastily she took her hands out of the flour, wiped them on the cloth kept on her table for that purpose, and hurried to embrace her cousin.

"Nell, you look beautiful!" Lucy exclaimed, holding her at arm's length. "Albert keeps you in good dresses!" She looked around the shop, bright and well-appointed. "And what a lovely shop!"

The bell tinkled again, and Benjamin walked in. Eleanor smiled immediately, feeling the familiar catch in her heart and throat. "Benjamin!" she exclaimed, accepting his gentle embrace.

"What are you doing here?" Eleanor asked, running to fill a teapot and seating her cousin and her husband at the corner booth. She sat down across from them, looking expectant.

"Well," Lucy said, sharing a glance with her husband. "As you know Benjamin is a barber." Eleanor nodded. "He's been looking to get his own parlor, now that we've saved enough." With another glance between husband and wife, Eleanor could only suppose that they'd lived frugally but with much love, so there wasn't much lack felt. Her throat closed.

"And so?" she managed.

"Well," Lucy continued, putting her hand over Benjamin's. "We're also expecting a baby in December. Around Christmas, actually."

The smile was automatic. Nellie loved babies, felt a natural affinity for them, and had to, once again, swallow a lump of jealousy that there had been no babies for her yet. Albert had told her she was young yet and there was time, but she had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't her fault. He was copiously overweight, and already gout was beginning to set in. Her courses were as regular as the moon and she was healthy, so the fault couldn't be hers. "That's wonderful, Lucy," she said, a note of excitement creeping into her voice.

"So we came to inquire after your upstairs room," Lucy finished. "Benjamin wants to open his own business, and we need a place for the baby. We have enough to pay you a good rent."

Eleanor jumped as the teakettle started to whistle. "I'm sure," she began thoughtfully, "that Albert would give you a fair price. Though he might ask you for a free shave or two," she added, grinning at Benjamin, who nodded.

"It would always be on the house for my brother," he said. "You can tell him that."

Eleanor poured them each a cup of tea and went downstairs to fetch her husband. She recounted her cousin's words, and Albert, busy with a joint of beef and unwilling to entertain, told her to tell them they could rent it and welcome, for twenty pounds a month, and a free shave for him when he wanted.

Lucy and Benjamin agreed readily, and as they went to leave, Lucy clasped her cousin in a tight embrace. "Won't this be nice, Nell?" she whispered. "We'll be back together again, just like the old days."

Eleanor watched them go with tears brewing. A baby. Benjamin and Lucy and a baby, upstairs from herself. It seemed the girls were destined to compete their whole lives. She went back to making dough, salting it with a few disappointed tears before collecting herself and making more pies.

In a week they were moved in, and Benjamin paid for posters to be printed, announcing his opening at 186 Fleet Street, and soon the sound of footsteps of customers was heard on the staircase outside Mrs. Lovett's Meat Emporium every day except Sunday, when the Barkers and the Lovetts closed shop and went to church as was decent. He even hired a boy, Davy Collins, to help around his shop and eventually become an apprentice.

Eleanor watched Lucy grow larger and larger, the glow of motherhood only making her more angelic. Her belly protruded hugely in front of her and she gave up corsets, her graceful, gliding walk becoming more of an ungainly waddle. Eleanor stood straighter next to her, trying to make the most of her own grace, but Benjamin only loved Lucy the more. They paid their twenty pounds a month and ate supper with Albert and Eleanor every night. Albert's gout grew steadily worse, but he continued working.

The night Lucy went into labor, Eleanor threw Benjamin out of the upstairs room and sent him downstairs to pace in the shop. She spent a moment outside the door, fighting down the urge to sob as Lucy labored inside. A baby. She had almost managed to convince herself it would never happen, even as Lucy's body swelled. It was December twenty-third, the night before Christmas eve, and Eleanor had wound holly into her braids to welcome the baby with proper Christmas spirit. Lucy had laughed at her between contractions, always her old self. But as the pains grew more intense, she stopped laughing and began to cling to Eleanor, begging for her to do something, anything, to ease the pain.

Eleanor sat all night with her cousin, stroking her hair and murmuring words of comfort. When the time came, she pushed her cousin's knees apart and encouraged her to push, through the pain and envy in her heart. Truly she thought Lucy suffered more from fear than pain, for the infant came easily, after six or seven pushes, screamed lustily from the first, and, once washed and swaddled by Eleanor, ate greedily at her mother's breast.

Eleanor wiped her hands and arms clean, washed her face, and pushed her hair back into some semblance of order. Lucy slept, finally, and Eleanor took the baby from her arms, holding the little girl close. "Her name is Johanna," Lucy had murmured before falling asleep. And so she was.

"Johanna," Eleanor murmured. "Fanciful. But lovely, just like you, pet." She looked down at the tiny sleeping face, and went to the window. Looking down at London, she felt the word was a very big place, a lonely place. Tightening her hold on the baby, she wept for a minute or two, indulging her vanity and selfishness. Then she went downstairs to bring Benjamin his new daughter.

He was in the shop, and he was very, very drunk. Albert sighed, laughing a little, saying he had tried to stop Benjamin from having more than a glass or two to calm his nerves, but eventually had given up.

He was so drunk Eleanor was afraid to give him the baby, but his eyes brightened when she walked into the room. "Mr. Barker," she murmured, her eyes lowered demurely, "Your daughter."

"Johanna," they said at the same time. She handed him the baby, staying close in case he was too unsteady. But he stood firm, looking at the tiny baby with awe in his eyes. "And Lucy?" he asked.

"Sleeping soundly," Eleanor answered. "Let her rest." She took the baby from Benjamin and brought her for Albert to see.

"A fine daughter," Albert pronounced. "Congratulations, brother. I would propose a toast, but you've had enough. You'll sleep down here tonight." He left the room, slowly because of his leg.

"Oh, Nell," Benjamin said, his words a little slurred. "You're a jewel, you really are." He surveyed her holding his daughter. "You're going to be a fine mother."

A tear escaped, unbidden, but she turned before he could see it. "I have hope," was all she said. "Let me put the baby down and I'll bring you something to eat. Take the edge off that gin." She helped him sit down again with one arm, and went back upstairs. She put the baby in the little cradle that Albert had brought from his sister's house the week before. She checked on Lucy and went for the door.

"Nell."

Lucy's voice stopped her. Eleanor froze, her hand on the doorknob. She turned. "Yes, Lucy love?"

"Why were you crying?" Lucy asked. "I heard you."

Inwardly, Eleanor swore blackly. "Oh, nothing, dear," she said, her voice light. "Birth is a momentous occasion for all women, and I have no babies. I wish to be a mother." Half the truth was better than none at all.

Lucy's face softened in sympathy. "You'll have your babies, Nell," she said. "Never fear. You're young and healthy and beautiful to boot. You're made for babies."

Eleanor smiled with her lips only. "Sleep, dear. Benjamin is staying with us tonight so you can rest properly." With that she shut the door and went downstairs. After giving Benjamin thick blankets and a good pillow and settling him on the sofa in the sitting room, she went to bed. Albert was already snoring, and so she contented herself with the thought of a good night's sleep.

In the morning she gave Benjamin a hangover cure of her own making and sent him up to see his wife and new daughter. That was a scene she didn't want to witness. Tears were always at the edge of her vision, though she smiled and worked as she ever did. Albert worked as usual, preferring her pies for his lunch and tea. But still there was not much attention spared for his wife or her relations living above them. He was absorbed in the pain from his gout and the endless business of meat. There was always meat.

The baby grew, Lucy recovered, and Benjamin's business flourished. Life continued thus until one summer day Lucy burst into the shop, sobbing and screaming that Benjamin had been dragged away by the police and she didn't know why, and what was to become of them--

"Slow down!" Eleanor shouted finally over her cousin's frantic cries and the baby's wails. "Lucy, start from the beginning, please, tell me exactly what happened." She scooped Johanna into her arms and comforted the girl.

In between the woman's hysteria, Eleanor divined that they had been in St. Dunstan's market, looking at flowers for the barber shop when two constables had approached, hit him on the head, and dragged him away.

"For what crime?" Eleanor asked, horrified, and Lucy could only shake her head.

"He doesn't gamble, he doesn't whore, he doesn't... do anything!" Eleanor said. "What charge could be brought against him?"

"It doesn't matter!" Lucy wailed. "What am I to do without him?"

"Well, we'll get him back," Eleanor said, brisk and sensible. "It's plain he can't be accused of anything." She jiggled the baby. "This is folly. It must be a mistake." _It must be_, she thought to herself, dread filling her heart and throat. She wanted to scream and sob too, but knew that she couldn't. She had be to strong for Lucy's sake, for weak-willed, weak-minded Lucy, who had dissolved at the least crisis. "We'll go to the bailey straightaway." She made as if to go for her bonnet, but Lucy stopped her with a cry.

"I'm afraid of the law," Lucy said pitifully. "What if he's done something we don't know of? I couldn't bear to find out he's a criminal."

"Nonsense!" Eleanor exclaimed, rather annoyed. "He's not a criminal!" She put the baby down in her carriage, reached for her bonnet again and tied it securely. "Surely they'll listen to a good subject of Her Majesty's." She left Lucy sitting in the corner booth staring at her daughter.

Heart pounding, she headed for the bailey as fast as her feet could carry her. There had to be some mistake. Benjamin Barker was the most harmless of men, making honest money trimming the beards and hair of London's best citizens, poor and rich alike. He was well-regarded by all, went to church faithfully every week... there was nothing she could think of that would make Benjamin Barker a criminal.

"Sir!" she addressed a constable. "I wish to address the matter of Mr. Benjamin Barker, who was arrested this afternoon!"

The constable looked her up and down, taking in her frilled grey gown and fine bonnet. Eleanor straightened indignantly. "Where is a judge?" she asked loudly. "I must plead this man's case. He has been arrested wrongfully."

"Is that the barber?" another constable asked from a few feet away. Eleanor turned to him.

"Yes, sir," she said firmly. "From Fleet Street. He has been taken with no charge against him."

The constable shook his head. "That's not what I heard, miss." He too looked her up and down. "He's been put on a ship bound for Australia, he has. Charged with rape."

"What?" Eleanor was horrified.

"Aye, rape of a child," the constable said, nodding. "A little boy by the name of Davy Collins."

"His _apprentice_?!" Eleanor felt her throat close and swallowed hard. "He would _never_!"

"The law's the law, miss," the constable said. "Nothing you can do now."

Stunned, Eleanor turned from the bailey, and then turned back. "Who sentenced him?"

"Judge Turpin," the constable answered as he walked away. Eleanor could only head back to Fleet Street.

Lucy was upstairs when she returned, sobbing at the slanted window. Johanna was asleep in the cradle. Eleanor went to her cousin, putting an arm around her shoulders. "What did you find?" Lucy asked, her voice trembling.

"No one would tell me anything," Eleanor lied, as steadily as she could. Then, she couldn't control her tears anymore. "He's already on a ship bound for Australia."

The two women collapsed against each other, united at last in tragedy. Their tears were for the same man, the same love, the same horror. Poor Johanna, was all Eleanor could think.

Albert was predictably outraged, but upon hearing that Benjamin was already on a ship, he sighed and shook his head. "That's the law, dear," was all he said, leaving Eleanor crumbled on the sofa, in near hysterics herself. She had drugged Lucy with laudanum to make her sleep, and taken the baby downstairs and fed her mashed bread soaked in milk to make sure she wouldn't starve. She rocked the little girl to sleep, singing little lullabies through her tears, and settled her in the cradle, which she had also brought downstairs. Now she had her head in her hands, sobbing and scheming at the same time. Surely there was some way to disprove these charges, go to the Collins' home and demand they disprove these absurd charges, something. This couldn't be real.

She slept. What else was there to do?

In the morning, she roused herself when the baby cried. More bread and milk went into the little mouth, and the infant smiled up at Eleanor, breaking her heart afresh. She went upstairs with the little girl in her arms and checked on Lucy, who was groggy from the laudanum, but wanted her daughter. She wasn't much better this day, still crying and useless. Eleanor had managed to stem her tears for the moment and spent her day comforting her cousin and making plans for the future. "Of course you can stay here, no rent," she said as Lucy clutched her little daughter. "We'll keep you forever, not to worry. You're family. You and Johanna both."

Lucy looked at her cousin with her limpid blue eyes filled with tears. "Thank you, Eleanor." She looked out the window. "I've got nothing to live for anymore," she said. "Without my Benjamin, there's no life."

"Nonsense," Eleanor said, not ungently. "You've got a beautiful little daughter. Who needs you very much, you know."

Lucy sighed, rocking her daughter. "You love her just as much as I do, Nell. She'll live a happy life."

Eleanor frowned. "What are you saying, Lucy?"

"Nothing," Lucy answered softly, gazing out at grey London. "Nothing at all. I shall never recover from this."

Eleanor put a hand on her cousin's shoulder. "None of us will."

Lucy turned to look at Eleanor. "I always wondered," she said softly, "if you loved him too."

"What?" Eleanor removed her hand.

"You always look so sad," Lucy said. "And then when he walked into the room you would turn into a different person." She pressed her lips together.

"I have a husband," Eleanor said firmly. "Your Benjamin was always yours." And that was the whole truth, not half. With that she left the room. There was baking to be done and she would not indulge Lucy's nonsense, for though it wasn't nonsense, she couldn't allow it to be thought of otherwise.

After she'd had done with the baking, she went to relieve Lucy of the baby for a while, and gave her more laudanum to quiet her sobbing lest it rub off on the child. She sang her little nonsense songs and counted balls of dough, teaching her the names of things around the shop, fashioning her a doll out of scraps of fabric from her sewing box. She danced a bit, sang more, distracted the baby, served Albert his lunch with the child on her hip, and went about her day.

This continued in its way for two months or so. Eleanor was aware of a man standing below the window of the second floor, an older man always dressed finely in a red coat and gold breeches. He was often carrying flowers, some of which were left on the doorstep of the shop, and which Eleanor brought up to cheer Lucy. It never worked, and she wondered why.

One night, she thought she heard Lucy leave the upstairs, but when she looked out the window there was no one on the stairs, and the door upstairs was shut, no one in the street, so she went back to bed. She was sound asleep when Lucy crawled back up the stairs, raped and bleeding. Lucy had taken the laudanum herself that night.

It was yet another day of working, Johanna about eight months old, a bright baby, a happy one. Eleanor had taken to giving Lucy doses of laudanum every day; otherwise the poor woman sat dully at the window day after day, looking for Benjamin to come round the corner and come home to her. Eleanor took the baby every day, singing, dancing, working, mothering the girl.

Around six PM that day, when most of London was tucking into their dinner, an ugly man came to 186 Fleet Street, dressed in a leather coat and shiny breeches. He was the Beadle Bamford, Judge Turpin's bodyguard and henchman, though Eleanor could have no way of knowing this. He was accompanied by a guard. "Madame," the man said as he entered the shop, holding a walking stick braced with brass.

"Good evening," Eleanor said, moving the baby to her other hip. "Mr. Lovett is downstairs, might I take your order?"

The Beadle favored her with an oily smile. "I am not here for meat, Madame," he said unctuously. "I am here on order of Judge Turpin, who has instructed me to bring the orphan Barker girl to him."

"Orphan?" Eleanor exclaimed, backing away from him and clutching the baby to herself. "She's not an orphan, she's got a mother, and I furthermore I am her aunt, and you--"

The Beadle stepped forward, and thrust his walking stick in Eleanor's path. "Albert!" she nearly screamed. "Albert, help me!"

But she knew it would be useless, somewhere deep in her mind. He would never make it up the stairs in time, nor was it easy to hear what was going on above. Time seemed to slow as the Beadle snatched the child from her arms and the guard held her back. She scratched at the man's face, fighting with all her might, but she was, for all her personality, a small woman. She was no match for a six-foot-tall guard. She screamed as loudly as she could, running after them even after the guard let her go, screaming into Fleet Street, but no one stopped. No one heeded her, and she felt her legs give out in a dead faint.

It was Albert who roused her, demanded to know what had happened, and who gathered her to him, though he smelled of meat and sweat, and told her there was nothing to be done, nothing at all. She refused to believe this, but could not find a solution in her quick mind, to reclaim that little girl who had afforded her such happiness and indulged her desire to be a mother. She felt as reduced as Lucy, sobbing until she vomited. Albert heaved himself to his feet, picked her up, and brought his wife into their apartment. He put her into their bed, wiped her face, and gave her the same dose of laudanum she would have given Lucy.

Again, she slept. What else was there to do?

In the morning it was Albert who went upstairs to tell Lucy what had happened the night before. Eleanor shut her eyes as Lucy began to scream. She felt like joining her, but clamped her lips shut and let the tears roll down her face. Lucy tore down the staircase into the shop like a madwoman. She went straight for Eleanor, who, in nothing but a nightshift, was standing in the middle of the hallway leading from the apartment to the shop. Lucy flew at her, fists pounding every bit of flesh she could reach, tearing the red hair, screaming, "You let them take her, you bitch! You horrible bitch! You let them take my baby, you jealous, horrid bitch!"

"No! No!" Eleanor was screaming, trying to protect herself from her cousin's flying fists. "I didn't! I didn't, I loved her like she was mine, I swear!"

"She wasn't yours!" Lucy spit. "She was mine, mine and Benjamin's and you wanted them both for your own, you evil, vile, black witch!"

There was blood from a split lip on Eleanor's face when Albert managed to disentangle the two women. They were both breathless, sobbing hysterically. Eleanor was shaking. "Please, Lucy, believe me," she said unsteadily. "I loved her like she was mine. I couldn't do anything, they were so big, and I am so small--" Here she began to sob again. "She was my baby too."

Lucy whirled out of Albert's grip, her eyes wild. She went into the street and disappeared faster than Albert could catch up with her.

"Let her go," he said finally. "She'll come back; she's too much good sense to run away."

"Even now?" Eleanor demanded, rushing to the door. "Even now?"

"Someone will bring her home," Albert said, pulling his wife back. "You've no business being outside in nothing but a nightgown."

A deep silence reigned over the house for half an hour. When Eleanor heard footsteps ascending the stairs she tore out of the living room and followed Lucy's retreating figure upstairs. Lucy nearly shut the door on her but Eleanor forced her way in. "Where have you been?" she demanded.

"The apothecary," Lucy replied, remarkably steadily. She looked almost sane. "We needed laudanum."

"I don't believe you," Eleanor said.

Lucy tossed a small pouch at her cousin. "See for yourself." She had kept the other vial in her bodice. Eleanor needn't know about that.

Having inspected the contents of the pouch, Eleanor took it and tucked it into her bodice. "I'll keep it for you."

Lucy shrugged. "Content yourself. Only leave me some now so I can sleep."

Eleanor prepared a dose and Lucy shut her out of the room with a, "Go make some pies, Eleanor."

When her red-headed cousin had retreated, bruises beginning to blossom on her face, Lucy sat down on her bed, fished out the vial, unscrewed it, and inhaled the acrid scent of arsenic. She sat for a moment, saying a silent prayer for herself and her daughter and her husband, and took the arsenic in one swallow. It burned, it stung, and she wanted to vomit, but through tremendous strength of will, Lucy did nothing but lie down on her bed and wait for death to come.

It was in this way that Eleanor found her several hours later. She let out a shriek of horror at the sight of her cousin's blanched face. "Lucy!" she cried, shaking the young woman. She put her ear to Lucy's chest and nearly collapsed when she detected a heartbeat. She shifted Lucy so that she was on her side if she should vomit. Her skin was cold but she had a pulse, albeit sluggish. When Lucy didn't vomit, Eleanor turned her onto her back again. She sat by her bed until sunset, when she had to go down and cook for Albert, and tell him what Lucy had done. She brought the vial with her, and Albert, upon sniffing it, looked grave and said, "This is arsenic, Eleanor."

"Shall I call a priest?" Eleanor asked anxiously, wringing her hands.

"She lives yet," Albert said. "We'll give it 'til morning. If she is worse, then we'll call a priest and give her last rites." He sighed. "Her soul will burn in hell for her suicide."

Eleanor slammed his plate down in front of him. "Don't say that," she snapped. "She'd be forgiven, what with the awful things that would happen. She deserves to go home to Jesus." She looked around. "This life is nothing for her anymore."

Her heart was so heavy inside her, so heavy she felt she could barely move. But move she did, for if she did not she would drown in her grief. She kept cooking, kept baking, kept vigil by her cousin's side.

Lucy did not rouse for four days. Then, nearly three AM of the fifth day, she suddenly took a great inhalation, threw back her head, and shook her whole body. Eleanor, keeping watch by candlelight, could only hold her hand and watch. At the end of it Lucy turned her head to the side and vomited, a great mass of bile and blood. Eleanor leapt out of the way in time, and when it was over, she crept back to Lucy's side. The woman's eyes were open. "Turpin," she was muttering. "Turpin."

"The judge?" Eleanor whispered, hoping Lucy would hear her and tell her more.

"Rape," was the next word out of Lucy's mouth and Eleanor gasped.

"Turpin raped you?" she asked in horror. "The judge who took Johanna?"

Lucy turned her face to her, her blue eyes void. "Johanna," she moaned. "Johanna."

Eleanor sat back in horror and grief. Turpin had raped Lucy and stolen her daughter, after ordering Benjamin across the world. "Oh, Jesus," she exhaled. The tears followed, but the vomit had to be cleaned, and Lucy had to be tended to.

This became a gruesome routine. Eleanor stopped baking and devoted herself to her cousin, cleaning up after her, attempting to feed her and discern some sense out of the woman's nonsense ramblings. There wasn't much sense to be had. For four months Lucy lay prone and Eleanor kept her clean and alive. But she knew then that the arsenic had ruined her pretty cousin's mind.

Lucy disappeared on a Sunday. Eleanor looked frantically for hours through the dirty streets of London, but could not find her. The words, "Go make some pies, Eleanor," rang through her head at intervals, and it angered her. Everything she had lost, as though she had not suffered as much as Lucy for love and loss of Benjamin, and for the loss of Johanna as well. As if she had not loved just as much. And it was then that the anger suddenly overwhelmed her, and she turned back to Fleet Street. Lucy had been given everything her entire life, the perfect man, the best education, the beautiful wedding, the chance at the moon on a string. She was a fool. Eleanor went back into the shop.

"She's gone," she announced to Albert down in the bakehouse. "I couldn't find her."

Albert offered to have posters printed. Eleanor shook her head. "Albert, she's swallowed arsenic. If she didn't die here she'll die out there."

And so for once Eleanor Lovett took her husband's part and let Lucy wander. Enough was enough, she thought.

There were no babies of her own in the next few years. Albert's gout worsened steadily and he was confined first to his chair, and then to his bed, and then, finally, eight years after Lucy disappeared, he died, massively swollen by gout and weight. Eleanor buried him with dry eyes and paid to have his sign replaced. It now read "MRS. LOVETT'S MEAT PIES."

She drew on her baking experience and began to buy meat from a butcher she had become acquainted with. She began baking pies, and sold her good dresses to make ends meet. When most of those were gone, she went upstairs and sold the furniture up there, but for the baby's cradle. She couldn't bring herself to part with it, the reminder of the little shining girl. After went her better jewelry and rugs, until her apartment was quite bare. She resigned herself to a life of solitude and meat pies.

That changed the day her shop door opened with a tinkle of the old bell, and a black-haired man with a streak of white running through his hair like lightning walked in. She gasped, "A customer!"


	2. Chapter Two: Tools of the Trade

**Chapter Two: Tools of the Trade**

All but forcing him into the booth, she handed him a woefully molding pie, too excited to see another person to care much. Her shop, like herself, had fallen into terrible disrepair, and the ale in the barrel had long ago gone bad, but she poured him a tankard nonetheless, chatting to him (really without taking a breath) about the lack of customers and how terrible her pies must be, really to cover her embarrassment. She didn't recognize him at first, until she had taken pity on him and brought him to the back to give him some gin to cleanse his palate. Then, in the firelight, she thought... he looked like...

When he inquired after the room above her shop, she decided to test him, saying people thought the room was haunted, recounting the events that had passed up there, until he screamed and gave himself away. Her heart seemed to expand all at once until she could barely speak.., and she whispered, "So it is you. Benjamin Barker."

And all he had wanted to know was where Lucy was. And so once again, she told him half the truth. She poisoned herself with arsenic, and Turpin took their daughter. She had listened to his agony, his anguish, and wanted desperately to comfort him. Then he had whirled on her, telling her his name was Sweeney Todd now, that he was crazed for revenge, and what had she done but take him upstairs to his old lodgings, once filled with light, now neglected and dark. Amid the dust, she knelt and loosened a floorboard, a familiar location, and drew out a wrapped package. She undid it, enchanted by his face, terrified that the rush of love she had always felt for him had come back to her full-strength. "When they came for the girl, I hid them," she said softly. "Could've sold them, but I didn't." She remembered suddenly going upstairs to look for things to sell, seeing his box of razors, and weeping, hiding them. They were too precious. Now he was back, miraculously, and holding the carved box. He opened them, and the razors glinted as bright as they had always been. "Those handles're chased silver, innit?" she asked, her accent thickened into East London dialect.

"Silver," he said softly, distractedly. "Yes."

As he admired his favorite tools of his former trade, she stared at him, taking him in, all his pallor and his wild hair, the remains of the man she loved so intensely. She moved closer and closer to him, taking in the miraculous fact that he smelled wonderful, leaning into his skin, hoping for some token of appreciation for all her efforts, and received only a rough, "Leave me." Which she did, of course, content to let him bask in his past for a moment. He came down later, and she fed him with meat she had bought that day, a better meal than her last pie. He didn't speak much, and despite her efforts, he would only nod.

A week after his arrival (she had set him up with a bed in his upstairs room), a week spent plotting and planning to revive his business, since it would be mutually beneficial, she told him of a man who visited St. Dunstan's market once a week on Thursdays, and who was reportedly the last word in barbering. For this event she pulled out her good dress, her last one, and pinned a hat over her disheveled curls. "He's here every Thursday," she repeated. "Eye-talian. All the rage, he is. Best barber in London, they say."

He hadn't said much, but she had had to, very nonchalantly, prevent him from pulling out his razor in the middle of the market when he spotted the Beadle Bamford, whom she too now hated violently. Much as she wouldn't mind seeing him bleeding on the floor, for how he had taken Johanna from her, she knew murder in broad daylight was... undesirable. And so she had stayed him and he had obeyed, standing meekly beside her. And she would have been lying if she said she did not feel a small glow of triumph that he did so.

They watched a little boy perform the duties of a street-caller, hawking bottles of a "miracle elixir," to grown hair on even the most stubborn of scalps. When the scent of piss drifted to them, she felt Mr. Todd stiffen beside her. He had found his way clear to destroying his rival. She helped just a bit, throwing in an acid comment or two, but it was when he challenged the peacock Italian to a shaving contest that he truly distinguished himself. She watched in undisguised admiration as the Italian strutted and crowed, while her Mr. T merely sharpened his razor, taking his time on purpose she supposed, and then did what he did best: shaved closely and cleanly to the skin. The crowd was delighted by the spectacle and in the ensuing minutes, she put his coat back on him, taking her time to run her fingers over his clothes, straightening things here and there, and told a gentleman where his premises were. Word would spread quickly, she knew, and she could just imagine the money flowing in, hard times over. It would be lovely to have no debts any longer, maybe think about some nice new dresses, for if men came for a shave, surely they'd come for a pie too. The thought was wonderful, and she was grateful to Mr. Todd.

She could overlook his little indiscretions, the excessive consumption of gin, the fact that he hardly had a kind word for her (or many words at all), all for the fact that he was alive and standing in front of her.

She brought Albert's old chair to him one Tuesday morning, hauling the blasted thing up the stairs herself and dragging it into the center of the room. "It's not much of a chair, but it'll do," she said, settling herself into the worn leather. "Was me poor Albert's chair. Sat in it all day long he did, after his leg give out with the gout."

"Why doesn't the Beadle come?" he asked agitatedly. "Before the week is out, that's what he said."

"Well, who says the week's out?" she asked contentedly from her perch on the, her legs crossed in a decidedly unladylike posture, her red-striped stockings exposed (a vanity she had allowed herself; women should have lovely things, no matter how poor). She was proud of her figure, that it hadn't suffered in all the years of neglect and work; she was still curvy, her breasts still high, her waist as tiny as it had ever been. Well, there had been no babies. "It's only Tuesday."

He glared at her, flinging his sharpening block aside with a thump and walking away as though she had said something of no merit. And so she took it upon herself to soothe him, calling him all manner of tender names and making the very valid point that the matter deserved some forethought. That he wanted revenge was perfectly acceptable; she too had reason to want the judge and the Beadle dead, though he couldn't know this. To distract him she suggested flowers to make the room more prepossessing, but his attention was all for his razor.

Then the young man had come clattering up the stairs and the spell was broken. With him he brought the earth-shattering news that Johanna he was rescuing Johanna, and the look on Mr. Todd's face had broken her heart. "Bring her here, love," she said, relishing the way Mr. Todd's eyes traveled to her for advice. The young man ran out smiling, and Mr. T went to the window. "Poor little Johanna," she murmured. "All those years without a scrap of motherly affection. Well, we'll soon see to that." And, with visions of a beautiful young girl who would treat her as a mother, she too went to the window.

She noticed Pirelli the same time Mr. Todd did. "Hello," she said. "What's he doing here?"

"Keep the boy downstairs," was all the answer she got.

And she did, without question. She whisked him away from his peacock master and handed him a fresh pie, which he ate greedily. She engaged him in conversation and kept a sharp ear on the events upstairs. All she could hear was footsteps and the faint murmur of voices. And then-- and then, a terrible thud, as though a body had hit the floor. Knowing Mr. Todd... she sprang up and began banging around, affecting a busy manner. "My, my, my," she said hurriedly. "Always work to be done. Spic and span, that's my motto." It was ludicrously, obviously untrue, but the little boy accepted it. Then, suddenly, he remembered an appointment and went barreling up the stairs. She spent a very tense three minutes in nearly suspended animation until he came down again, completely unperturbed, saying that his master had been unexpectedly called away, and that Mr. Todd had told him to go back down for a glass of gin that she would be kind enough to provide. And provide it she did (even left him the bottle), before hurrying upstairs to find out just what had happened.

"That lad is drinking me out of house and home," she said. "How long 'til Pirelli gets back?"

And then he had turned, and the bright red stain on his freshly-washed shirt made her jaw drop. "Mr. T, you didn't!" she gasped.

His eyes slid to the trunk against the wall, and she lifted the lid with some trepidation. The body made her stomach heave a little and she slammed the lid shut in horror. "You're barkin' mad," she hissed at him. "Killing a man what done you no harm!"

"He recognized me from the old days," Mr. Todd said grimly, inspecting his razor. "Tried to blackmail me. Half me earnings."

"Oh, well," Mrs. Lovett let her breath out, aware that it would have been money out of her pocket as well. "That's a different matter, then." But still... killing someone... she hadn't wanted to believe him capable of it. "For a moment there I thought you'd lost your marbles." She heaved the lid open again and observed the crumpled body, her horror pushed back to someplace vague. "Ooh. All that blood. Poor bugger," she said, remarkably calmly. "Oh, well." She reached in daintily, removed his purse and looked inside. There were a significant amount of bill and coins within; more help for the shop. "Waste not, want not," she murmured, speaking her thoughts aloud. "So, er... what are we going to do about the boy then?"

"Send him up." Mr. Todd didn't even look at her.

Mrs. Lovett felt her heart drop. "Oh, we don't have to worry about him, he's a simple thing."

"Send him up." This time he looked at her, his teeth gritted.

Mrs. Lovett absolutely refused. She moved closer to him, her fingers drifting across the front of his vest. "Now, Mr. T, surely one's enough for today." She tilted her head ever so slightly, so that her smooth neck and shoulders were presented to him. "Besides, I was thinking of hiring a lad to help me 'round the shop. Your poor knees aren't what they used to be." Oh, yes, she had noticed him wincing when he bent.

"All right." Mr. Todd walked away from her, towards the window. Mrs. Lovett breathed a sigh of relief. She joined him at the window, looking down into the wet London streets.

"'Course we're going to have to stock up on the gin," she continued. "Boy drinks like a sailor."

She saw something catch his attention, his whole body alert. "The judge," he blurted, his frown intensifying. He looked around the room, as if searching for something, and then turned on her. "Get out," he growled. She didn't move, hoping he would ask her to aid him somehow in this. "Get out!" he snarled, and she practically flew out the door.

The next space of time she would never quite remember. It was quiet, until she saw the sailor run up, the judge run down, heard the word, "OUT!" shouted from above, and saw the sailor go barreling down and back into the streets. She immediately dropped the rolling pin, which clattered to the floor, and flew back upstairs.

"All this shouting and running about, what's happened?" she demanded.

"I had him," Mr. Todd said faintly.

"The sailor busted in, I know," she said, shutting the door hastily. "I saw them both running down the stairs."

"I had him." His voice was raw.

Mrs. Lovett did not like the tone his voice was taking. It scared her badly to see his eyes growing wild. "There, there, dear, calm down--" she began, but he cut her off.

"No! I had him!" He was nearly screaming now.

"Easy now," she started again, "I keep telling you--"

"When?" His face was blanched, no color at all underneath his skin, and her small comforting smile dropped. With fear in her face, she tried again, "What's your rush?"

"Why did I wait?" he snarled at her. "You told me to wait! Now he'll never come again!"

Mrs. Lovett watched him rage, pacing, screaming, pushing her into the chair and holding his razor to her throat (even then she stared at him with desire, desire he was too insensible to see), and finally falling to his knees. When he opened his eyes again, staring emptily at the ceiling, she let her breath out. "That's all very well," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "But what are we going to do about him?" She tossed her head in the direction of the chest that still contained the Italian man's body.

He didn't answer. She bent over so that she was face-to-face with him. "Hello?" she said. "D'you hear me?" He'd gone over the edge, she thought. Still nothing. She locked her arms around his middle and heaved him to his feet. "Great useless thing," she murmured affectionately, helping him down the stairs and into the shop. Retrieving the bottle from the boy Toby, who was now sleeping peacefully in front of the fire, she poured Mr. Todd a half-full glass. "Drink it down," she said, for all the world like a mother with a sick child. He did so, wincing at the burn. His eyes cleared. "Now. We've got a body moldering away upstairs. What do you suppose we should do about that?"

Staring into the depths of the glass, Mr. Todd said, "Later on when it's dark we'll take him to some secret place and bury him."

He'd gone over the edge for a certainty. No one killed anyone in their right mind. As his pale fingers wandered over the glass, Mrs. Lovett thought with a surge of love and tenderness and fear, that even there, even over the edge, she would follow him.

And so she whispered her plan to him, making terrible, scandalous fun of the people of London, letting him sweep her around the shop in a waltz. In this way she proved her devotion to him.

She was amply rewarded. He was filled with pent-up energy from the thrill of his first kill, from the frustration of losing the judge, from the twisted exhilaration of her plan. When he backed her into the wall and pressed himself to her, he murmured, "You're a bloody wonder, Nell."

The pronunciation of her name so startled her that she looked straight into his eyes in confusion. "What?" she asked before she could help herself. For a moment, just for a moment, she thought she saw Benjamin looking out from those black eyes.

Mrs. Lovett submitted to his touch uncomplainingly. He backed her into the baking table, forcing her knees apart, smearing flour onto her dress, in her hair, along her skin, shoving the worn fabric up her thighs, half-frowning at the violence of her reaction to him. Oh, she was as silent as she was able, but the table scraped back a few inches along the floor when he undid his breeches and pushed into her, and she had let out a noise between a moan and a yelp with his name mixed in, "Mr. Todd!"

Somehow, when he was this embarrassingly close to her, he couldn't hear her address him by a title. So he covered her mouth with a long-fingered hand and hissed, "Shut up."

And her eyes, large and wet with tears, glared into his defiantly before they closed and her head tilted back, her white throat exposed to him. Curiously enough, without his razors she presented no temptation to him, no organic plea for death. He had frowned down at her unblemished skin. She was... moaning, her arms pinned back by his hands, her thighs gripping his hips.

This wasn't about her, he reflected as he dug his fingers into her flesh, eliciting a sharp intake of breath from her. He felt as though he were looking at the world through the haze of his desperation to relieve this tension, this pent-up tightness he stored between his shoulders, and (when he saw her bustling from table to oven and back again, his accomplice in all things), between his legs. It was a feeling he'd effectively quashed during his time in Botany Bay, one that sprang up unexpectedly about a month after he had arrived back and settled into his rooms over her shop. He had done nothing about it then, but slowly, surely, the primal need for human contact had forced his hand, quite literally. Forced his hand up the skirt of a woman he didn't desire with the same fire with which he had wanted his golden Lucy, but who was willing and present, and whose body accommodated his without complaint.

It didn't take longer than five minutes, Mr. Todd slamming his hand down on the table next to her when he came, raising a cloud of flour. He pulled out and away all of a sudden, pulling her skirt back down. He did up his breeches and cleared his throat. Mrs. Lovett straightened herself, looking up at him with such adoration he turned away from her. What did one say at this moment? Neither of them knew. And so he merely glanced at her, muttered a quick, "I'll be going," and fled.

Mrs. Lovett smoothed her hands over her dress again, wincing as she slid back onto her feet. She pulled at her skirt and sighed. That flour would take hard scrubbing to get out of her dress.

Her lips curved just so slightly.


	3. Chapter Three: Profits

Eleanor Lovett was nothing if not practical. She ran her business, kept her house tidy, and looked after her lodger's comfort, mental and physical. She kept him fed, washed the blood out of his clothes as he began to kill more and more, and did the butchering of the meat he provided. She prided herself that she was not the only one with skill at the blade.

She began to live with him as a wife would, which is to say that he shared her bed more often than not. There were nights when he didn't come to her and she contented herself with an uninterrupted night's sleep, or nights when neither of them slept a wink, her body melded to his. It was, on the whole, a satisfying relationship (Albert had never been very adventurous, and she didn't think she'd ever felt anything like making love with Benja-- Mr. Todd), though more and more the thought crossed her mind that he should really marry her. She were a respectable widow woman, after all, and people must be whispering about her living with a man alone. It irked her that what they would be whispering would be true. Surely that Lovett woman must be living in sin with that barber.

If they only knew.

Upstairs in his shop Mr. Todd was examining his face in the mirror. Though he'd been removed from the flow of time as he knew while slaving under the hot Australian sun and the punishment of Her Majesty's justice, he had aged. Gradually the work had become harder to do, though his natural dexterity with a razor had translated into a skill with his hands in general, which had earned him some reputation as a tinker of sorts. Oh, yes, he could build things, and had a fascination with mechanical objects. He had often been called to tame squeaking doors, fix drafty windows, repair furniture for the officers. One such man had remarked, "Ye know, Barker, it's a damn shame yer a dirty arse-raping pervert. Ye might've been in Her Majesty's Royal Engineers."

To which Benjamin Barker had merely smiled tightly. Sweeney Todd, whom he already felt stirring around under his skin, had felt a murderous urge to shove his pliers into the man's eye.

He was forty-one now, at the age when a gentleman was well-established in his family and his business, living comfortably where and how he chose. Instead he was standing in the wreckage of his past, trying to rise from the ashes, fucking a woman who had always fascinated him but whom he had never thought to attain.

The thought made him blush hotly. _Fuck_ was such a coarse term, one that shouldn't be applied to her, but he was at a loss to describe their coupling in any other words. It was desperate, passionate, heated, intensely sensual-- Mr. Todd looked away from his reflection. He recalled Toby's face when he had described Mrs. Lovett: "She's a real lady." Said it with such enthusiasm, too.

And he had smiled and agreed, thinking of her dropping her nightshift on the ground and standing naked in front of him in the light from her drawing room fire (couldn't even make it to the bedroom, the whore), her hair released from its messy conglomeration of pins. She was redheaded, everywhere, a dark auburn that bordered on brown. He remembered being briefly surprised that her hair was so long; it fell past her waist in waves and tendrils that reminded him forcefully of Botticelli's Venus, but with an undertone of madness. She was very beautiful.

The boy, looking at him expectantly, had been distracted with the promise of gin, and had gone scampering off.

Mr. Todd felt unconsciously for the razor in the holster at his hip. Drawing it out, he admired the way the light played along the delicate carving on the handle. It never ceased to amaze him; surely the craftsman who had made these for him was a wizard of some kind. The razors only grew more beautiful as time went by, unlike men. Flipping out the blade, always honed to deadly sharpness, he inspected the edge. It was miraculous, the malleability of metal. It made him feel very powerful, this manipulation of an essential element, and that was something no one else could understand.

Downstairs in the bakehouse Mrs. Lovett set aside her knife and wiped her brow with the back of a gloved hand. Her back was starting to twinge something awful from the constant bending and pulling, cracking and peeling. She stank of meat and blood and wanted a wash desperately.

Leaving her knife lying on the table and putting the meat into the grinder, she trudged out of the room and upstairs to heat a kettle of water for a bath. It took a half-hour's hard work to fill the bath, and by then she was pouring sweat. She wriggled out of her corset the way she'd learned to do as a young woman without a maid, and discarded her bloomers, chemise, and skirt along with it. She climbed into the bath, unpinning her hair, and sank into the hot water, her skin flushing with the heat. "Ah," she breathed as she felt her muscles unclench. She set to scrubbing herself and watched as the blood stained the water, in red tendrils. Sometimes she could understand why Mr. T was the way he was.

She had closed her eyes and was drifting in a sea of pleasant thoughts when she heard her door open.

"Oh." Mr. Todd was standing in the doorway, looking rather surprised to see her in the altogether. "Sorry," he said, his eyes averted.

"Oh, don't trouble yourself," Mrs. Lovett said languidly, bending a knee so that her body was exposed completely. She looked back at him perfectly lucidly, aware of her effect on him. His eyes were roving her body, still round and small as it had been when she was young. Her breasts were still high, never having nursed a child. Her waist was slim, never having been stretched in pregnancy, and that singular part of her that he lusted after so fiercely was as it had ever been. His enjoyment of her body was a constant surprise to her. He had not seemed to appreciate much when first he'd returned. But the first time he had unlaced her corset and pulled her shift away from her breasts, there was a fascination in his eyes that she hadn't seen except when he was looking at his razors. She was immensely gratified at this, and so gave him free rein.

Mr. Todd came further into the room. He leaned his hands on the edge of the bath, surveying her. "Have you finished the meat?" he asked conversationally.

"I wouldn't dream of being in the bath if I hadn't." Mrs. Lovett's voice was positively dripping with languor. She played with a strand of wet hair, trailing it through her fingers. "What did you need, love?" she asked.

He was observing the drops of water trailing down her shoulders, over her breasts. "Have you finished... in here?" he asked, his voice a little rough around the edges. She was starting to recognize this as lust rather than anything bloodthirsty.

"I suppose," Mrs. Lovett said, stretching luxuriously. She waved her hand at a thick sheet she'd left in a heap next to her clothing. "Would you be so kind?"

As he bent, she stood up. When he turned she was standing naked in front of him, unabashedly displaying herself. He gave her a hand to get her out of the tub, and waited until she had wrapped herself in the sheet before he backed her into the wall.

"Mr. T!" She looked surprised and then immediately full of desire. She cried out in surprise and pleasure when Mr. Todd put a hand up under the sheet. Sliding two fingers inside of her, he began to circle his thumb over that most sensitive bundle of nerves. Mrs. Lovett gasped and clung to the barber, her whole body alive with sensation. "Oh, Christ Jesus, Mr. T," she moaned into his neck. She felt him huff a laugh into her skin and felt his teeth scrape along her shoulder. He was enjoying himself, enjoying making her knees buckle, the unflappable Mrs. Lovett undone at last.

She came with a rush and a moan, and he waited until she had done moaning his name and shaking before he let go of her. He wiped his hand on the sheet wrapped around her and kissed her once, roughly. "So as you remember who you owe your loyalty to," he said, his voice frayed around the edges. She could see that he was aroused, and sought to draw him closer, but he pushed her arms away. "Dress yourself," he said. "There'll be customers once we start the dinner rush." And he left her there, to collect herself and put her dress on.

As he went back upstairs, the barber had a sudden vision of Eleanor Lovett as she used to be: red-haired, cinched into beautiful, muted gowns, her brown eyes flashing with wit. Of course in those days it was Lucy that occupied his mind, but he would be lying if he did not acknowledge that he had fought the urge somewhere in him to take that redheaded girl for a gallop into the woods and have her against a tree. He didn't think she would say him nay. Of course then he would berate himself for wanting to dishonor the girl, but in all honesty it was one of his most frequent fantasies. He had never been unfaithful to Lucy, nor had he sought to attain her cousin's sexual favors, but he would sheepishly admit that, shortly after they'd moved in, he'd come down the interior staircase and seen young twenty-two-year-old Eleanor Lovett with her corset discarded and her shift falling from her shoulders as she filled a bath. He'd stayed long enough to see her shed the fine linen and climb in, admiring her body. Then, shamefacedly, he'd abandoned his idea of going down to have a tot of gin with Albert, and gone back to bed. The vision of Eleanor naked, her hair tumbling down past her breasts, was too erotic for him to dwell on. Albert was a lucky man.

In the present day, having touched what he'd only seen, Mr. Todd had to admit to himself that that part of him was much the same. Though he was sure Lucy had been the love of his life, Eleanor Lovett would never lose her fascination. Fifteen years later, she was more womanly, fuller in her curves, and settled in her sexuality in a way Lucy had never managed to be. Lucy had loved him very much, yes, and submitted to him sexually in every way she was able to, but Eleanor was a completely different animal. She had been entirely wasted on Albert Lovett, a man too infirm and too concerned with his money to truly appreciate her. And while he might no longer be gentle, idealistic Benjamin Barker, she was certainly a match for Sweeney Todd. She was positively voracious, both of them moving with the desperation of not having had sex in fifteen years. She seemed to welcome any pain she experienced and he could not get enough of her.

He shaved three and killed two that night. It was so busy between the interior and the eating garden that no one noticed the men who didn't return. Mrs. Lovett floated among her customers, an eccentric angel distributing meat pies, while Toby darted between tables refilling mugs and collecting coins. He looked at her so worshipfully, and Mrs. Lovett smiled her motherly smile at the boy. She would glance up every so often at Mr. Todd, standing at his ease (or at as much ease as he ever could manage) at the railing, watching her with a curious look in his eyes. It was somewhere between affection and uncertainty, as if he were not sure he could count on her compliance. She had never given him reason to doubt her.

That night when he unlaced her corset the night's profits fell from her bodice in a shower of gold and silver.

In the morning she found herself alone in her bed, a fact which didn't perturb her; often Mr. Todd was upstairs brooding over his razors, sharpening them. Once in a great while he took a walk. He always looked so burdened, and she knew the idea that Johanna was in the same city as him, in the possession of a man she considered her mortal enemy as much as Mr. Todd's, sat heavy on his mind and heart.

Mrs. Lovett attempted to be as wifely as she could to him. Often he would sit next to her at her fire while she sewed new shirts for him, or talked about profits and expenses. Albert had made a keen businesswoman of his young wife. He would stare into the flames, make the appropriate noises in response to her chatter, and disappear for a few hours. Then, somewhere around midnight or one o' clock, she would feel her mattress sink on one side and his hands would caress her body with a possessiveness that thrilled her to the core. Surely he had never touched Lucy this way, with this kind of hungry sensuality. Such pleasure had to be sinful in some way, she thought smugly. Well, the church had never served much purpose in her life.

Toby had already been up and about, sweeping the eating garden when she came into the shop, tucking a last few pleats into her day dress. She caught a glimpse of herself in the window reflection and smiled. She was so glad to have beautiful dresses again! For years it had been that one threadbare gown that she washed every other day. The only vanity she had allowed herself were her undergarments; red and black striped bloomers and stockings, which Mr. Todd had commented on when he'd taken them off her the first time. Now with the proper money she could get herself better gowns, and while these were distinctly more ornate than the younger Nellie Lovett would have worn (one must forgive a woman deprived of colorful and feminine things for so long, after all), they were still somber colors. She delighted in the fact that these muted tones still set her coloring off to such an advantage. She cinched herself as tightly as ever, perhaps indulged in a splash of violet water. It was lovely to feel pretty while doing such industrious work.

Mr. Todd did not make an appearance until almost noon, at which point Mrs. Lovett had been busily baking for an hour or more. She had swept the shop, did some small butchering, and set large amounts of meat cooking for filling. She was rolling dough for crust when she saw his shadow fall across the table. "Good morning, love," she greeted him, looking up and smiling.

He merely nodded, his hand playing at his side. She knew he had a razor or two nestled against his hip; they were like his security blanket, she thought compassionately. "Tea?" she asked. "Are you hungry?"

"No." His voice was flat. "I have been thinking on ways to get to the Judge."

Mrs. Lovett gritted her teeth for a fleeting moment, not raising her eyes from the dough. The _fucking_ judge. She was violently tired of hearing of the man and wished he would just drop dead of his own accord and spare her this mess. "And what have you thought of, love?" she asked, her voice carefully modulated to mask her irritation.

"Perhaps if Anthony were willing to cede the key to me, and let me take the girl, I could surprise him in his lair." Mr. Todd was staring at her baking table, eyes unseeing. "Two birds with one stone."

She made a noise of assent. She didn't much care anymore how the Judge was to be dispatched. It didn't matter.

"Might be too obvious, though," he mused. "Might be sloppy." His fingers stroked the handle of a razor absently.

"Talk to me of something else," Mrs. Lovett begged suddenly, her hands slamming down onto the lump of dough. "Anything, Mr. T, anything but of the damned Judge!"

He was at her throat before she could blink. His eyes were terrifyingly bright. "Are you suggesting, Mrs. Lovett, that you think I should _abandon_ this plan? Abandon Johanna?"

"I'm suggesting nothing, Mr. T," Mrs. Lovett said, her voice steady. She wasn't afraid of him.

"Are you saying you find my... obsession... to be tiring?" he asked her silkily. "You forget, Mrs. Lovett dear, pet, that you live at _my_ pleasure, not the other way 'round."

"I'm only asking for a little joy once in a while," she said, petulantly. "I know you're angry, Mr. T, but I do wish you'd smile once in a while."

"_Smile_?" His voice was rough, an incredulous laugh mixed in. "Smile, Mrs. Lovett? In a world that does not hold my wife? In a world where my daughter is a prisoner?"

"In a world where you have me!" Mrs. Lovett hissed. "I have proven myself to you by now, haven't I?"

"Proving yourself would have been saving your cousin's life," he snarled suddenly. "Proving yourself would have been keeping my family intact!"

Tears streaked her face at this, and Mrs. Lovett wrenched away from him. This was more than she should be expected to bear.

"Of course I tried to save her life, you stupid man!" she exploded, flinging aside her rolling pin, which hit the floor with a clatter. "You bloody fool, after you were gone who d'you think she came to?"

He was silent, his jaw tight.

"Did you think," she asked, looking up into those eyes like scraps of night in that moon-pale face, "that I would have let your daughter starve when all _she_ did was lie in bed spouting nonsense and vomit for days?" Her eyes roamed his impassive face, and grew contemptuous. "Yes," she said slowly. "You do think that, don't you?" She curled her fingers into his vest and shirt, lowering her voice. She was white-faced with fury. "I carried your daughter in my arms until the day they took her away from me."

That sentence caused a spasm of the barber's face that was truly painful to behold. "I rocked her to sleep like she was my own, I fed her when she cried, I loved her when Lucy could not." Mrs. Lovett's voice was raw with furious tears. "I tried to save them for you, you fool, so that if I couldn't make you happy myself at least I could preserve what would."

Then she clamped her lips shut, releasing her grip on his shirt. "It were my arms they took Johanna from," she said, deflating, casting her eyes to the ground. "Poor thing." She made to move away from him, but he stepped into her path, his hands curling around her shoulders and turning her to face him. He was shaking.

"And Lucy?"

"I sat by her bed for a week, didn't sleep a wink. She was in pain, great pain, and I could do nothing but wait for her to give up the ghost." She wriggled uncomfortably in his grip, trying to loosen it. "I think she did battle with the devil himself."

The barber's eyes were glittering with brittle rage and sadness. "We both wept for you," Mrs. Lovett finished softly. "That we would never see you more." She turned up her chin, to look him in the eye, her defiance and fear mingling in her eyes.

He let her go abruptly and flung himself away from her. "No," he said. "No, no. You never did this."

Mrs. Lovett's ire rose. "What's the problem, Mr. T? Can't imagine that someone else in this world could love you?"

He whipped around, his hand raised as if to strike her, but he stayed himself. Some part of him was still Benjamin Barker, she thought wildly, as she raised her own hands to protect herself. She set her jaw. "You'll not strike me, Mr. Todd. You'll not raise your hand to me, who has shown you such kindness." She attempted to still her trembling. "We may not be the people we were, but you will still treat me like a lady."

He growled and dropped his hand. "Don't push me, woman."

Mrs. Lovett snorted. "Who'll cook for you? Wash the blood out of your shirts, hm? Warm your bed?" This was spoken intimately. She slid past him, her breasts brushing his chest, and she heard him inhale sharply, though he tried to disguise it. She went for the oven, to retrieve a fresh batch of pies. "You might have a wrong to right, Mr. T, but I don't deserve your anger."

He waited until she set the pies down and pulled her away from the counter. Pulling her against him, he put his lips to her ear. "Everyone deserves my anger, _Nell_." He licked her neck, following with his lips. It was animal, lustful, and she felt her body respond, her face lifted to his. Then he pushed her away. "You'll get my anger and you'll get my lust and you'll get everything I give to you, and I won't kill you. And in return you will cook for me, you will wash the blood from my shirts, _and_," here his hands gripped her behind tightly, pushing their hips together, "you will warm my bed." He kissed her once, searingly. "We are not the same people we were," he added, "so do not look for Benjamin Barker to come to you, miraculously repenting of having married your cousin. That man is dead." He stroked her hair, the tangled curls, the falling pins. "You were ever Lucy's dark shade." His eyes roamed her face. "Lucy's beautiful, dark shade." His voice had lowered into a whisper.

It echoed her younger self's thoughts about herself so completely she gasped. "But then again," he continued. "I too am just a dark shade of myself. So perhaps we've come to a crossroads, you and I." Then he let her go, and she breathed again.

She went about her day steadfastly ignoring what he had said. If she acknowledged it she'd be liable to abandon her work and dance in the streets. Either that or sob wildly. Or perhaps laugh. She felt like a madwoman.

Surely this was progress.


	4. Chapter Four: Blood

It came over her, when she had been vomiting for a week straight (morning, noon, or night, it didn't much matter), that she might be with child. She dropped the bar of laundry soap into the water, her hands clutching the shirt she'd been scrubbing. Wasn't this one of the symptoms, the constant nausea? She'd been on her feet for hours, though, hadn't had a bite to eat in a long while, what with the customers and the housework... still. Still. She might go by the apothecary and ask. How did one know for certain, besides the missing of the monthly courses? She was surrounded by blood, always nearly bathing in it, so her own blood (or lack thereof) must needs fail to amaze her. It would have been unremarkable but for the frenetic pace at which her business was growing, that she had her courses. She hadn't even thought on them. Surely it had come this month.

But maybe it hadn't.

A hand moved down to her midsection, as always encased in a corset as was proper. Tears slipped down her cheeks unexpectedly, and she touched her face with an air of surprise. And she had been so careful. Every time he left her, she'd washed herself with vinegar and said a prayer to the Virgin that she would be spared becoming a burden to anyone. Well, so much for the power of prayer.

_He won't want a child by you_, the thought crept into her consciousness. _He won't want a child at all._

Oh, but, perhaps... Perhaps she could convince him, perhaps this was her ticket to the seaside. Perhaps if he knew there was a new little life on the way he would remember to live himself, and to spare others. They could get by...

Then she imagined the cold press of his razor against her throat, the eyes like steel. She would have to run, he would be furious at her for getting with child, and she wasn't sure he wouldn't slit _her_ throat next. She swallowed her feelings, and wrung the now-clean shirt out, tossing it into the basket of laundry to be hung out to dry.

_Come now,_ she berated herself, _sensible women don't die of it. _Surely she was capable of handling this situation.

She got herself to her feet, taking the heavy laundry basket with her and trudging outside to hang the clothes. The laundry line was set up behind the shop, directly under the back window of the barber shop. She glanced up, picked up a shirt, and reached up to hang it. She was short and the line was high. She blew a curl out of her face and got up on her tiptoes, straining to pin the shirt.

Suddenly the line shook and sank, and Mrs. Lovett startled back.

"Go ahead."

His voice was gruff, and she suppressed a smile. He was holding down the line for her. "Thank you, Mr. T, that's right gentlemanly of you," she said, and pinned his shirt to the line. She swallowed her desire to tell him then and there, and bent to retrieve another shirt.

"Was there much blood?" Mr. Todd asked, almost conversationally.

"I got to it all in time." Mrs. Lovett didn't dare look at him. "It took some scrubbing but no one'll be able to tell." She glanced at him with a small smile and went back to her task. As she was pinning a third shirt, the line suddenly bounced back out of her reach. She dropped the clothespin she'd been holding and turned into Mr. Todd's hands closing around her upper arms.

"What happened to you, Nell?" he asked, his voice a thread. "Your hair... your dresses..."

"Time hasn't been kind to me either, Mr. Todd," Mrs. Lovett said, trying to disguise the hurt in her voice. She might be a little disheveled, but she was certainly still beautiful. "I'm sorry I don't please you."

His hand on her wrist prevented her from turning away from him. "I never said that." He inspected her briefly, just for a moment, his eyes roving her face. "You're very beautiful," he added, thoughtfully. "Only you were never so... rough around the edges."

"A woman dies without love," Mrs. Lovett said finally, her eyes locked with his. She twisted her wrist out of his grasp, gently but firmly. "Leave me be, Mr. T. I have washing left to do."

His eyes narrowed as she turned her back on him. He hadn't meant to hurt her hadn't been thinking of her feelings when he said it. Wordlessly he pulled the line down again so that she could keep pinning the shirts.

She took it as an act of contrition.

The day passed in silence, and the evening brought its usual rush. She collapsed into bed at the end of the night, her body aching. She didn't protest when Mr. Todd rolled her onto her back, his hands pushing her night shift up along her thighs. But oh, how her body hurt. Her head hurt, her hands hurt, her heart hurt, and she swallowed back a surge of nausea and tears, trying to enjoy her Mr. Todd while he was with her. She could at least be thankful that he wanted her in bed this night; there were times he'd brought her up to his shop and had her over the arm of his chair, or simply took her work out of her hands and had her right there on the floor.

She imagined his eyes roving her face the way he seemed to habitually do, his hands moving to caress her belly, swollen with his child, her dark, dim London days finally behind her. Dover, Calais, anywhere but London. She imagined him kissing her gratefully, enchantedly, thanking her for the miracle of their baby.

She felt her thoughts return as she started to come, her body contracting despite the aches of the day. Her hands curled into the pillows. "Oh, Mr. T," she breathed, her back arching, her knees spreading.

He swore once, blackly, and buried his face in her shoulder to muffle the sound of his groan as he followed her. Her muscles seemed to be made of liquid now, the pain lessened. She stroked his hair.

She must have this, Mrs. Lovett decided then and there, at all costs. This was the man she loved and no one would complicate that. She lay in the firelight, her knees wide open, the man she loved lying between them, her shift bunched at her middle. It was positively indecent, and it was the closest she had ever felt to another human being.

That night she dreamed of a baby boy. Mr. Todd was holding the infant, tears in his eyes. "He's my son," the dream Mr. Todd said, with pride in his voice. She watched, exhausted, as he put a closed razor between the child's tiny fists. Then he stepped forward and drew another razor across her throat. She awoke gasping for air. Mr. Todd was sound asleep next to her, naked under the coverlet. His shoulders rose and fell with regular breaths, his face relaxed. He looked like Benjamin for just a fleeting moment, she thought. The idea made her eyes well up. She would have to tell him eventually. But when? When was a good time to stop a murderer in his tracks?

So she said nothing of it to him. The shop was prospering beyond her wildest dreams and she was on her feet well into the night. The weather was starting to warm, and so her new outdoor eating garden was always full. She remained Mr. Todd's faithful accomplice in his bloody business, but she was exhausted at the end of the night and often found herself weeping in front of the fire. She wanted so badly to be told that she wouldn't be alone, that they would be in this together like they were with the pies.

To distract herself she decided to take Toby to Hyde Park for a picnic. She insisted Mr. Todd come along, and packed a huge wicker hamper filled with fresh fruit, pies from the butcher down the street (filled with good beef, thank you), and pastries she had concocted herself, which even Mr. Todd ate. She dressed herself in one of her new gowns, a pretty navy blue striped confection with a corset to match. She fancied she looked quite fashionable.

Toby was clutching a brand-new kite that Mrs. Lovett had bought for him, and scampered off to fly it right away. Mrs. Lovett contented herself with musings about the business and its possibilities while Mr. Todd stared into the depths of the possibilities of killing the judge.

"Still got to keep an eye on household expenditure... which isn't to say we couldn't get a nice taxidermy animal, bring a touch of gentility to the place," she said thoughtfully. "You know, a boar's head or two?"

"Hm," was all the answer she got.

"Mr. T," she said, irked. "Are you listening to me?"

Ever the gentleman, he replied, "Of course."

"Then what did I just say?"

"There must be a way to the judge." He didn't even _look_ at her, the blackguard, just sat there.

"The judge!" she huffed. "Always harping on the bloody old judge. We've got a nice respectable business now. Money coming in, regular-like." She shifted to look at him. "And since we're careful to pick and choose, strangers, people who won't be missed. Who's going to catch on?"

And with that she planted a soft kiss on his cheek. And followed it with a few more, trying to break down that wall, that stony silence that was breaking her slowly but surely. She whispered to him, just as she had about the pies, about a life next to the sea, in a place where they could leave this all behind. She plied him with the idea of domestic bliss, her in pretty and feminine gowns, good food, comforts...

And he put out his hand, resting it briefly on her knee. He didn't look up, didn't face her, didn't come out of his thoughts, but he acknowledged her.

It was... it wasn't enough. Not with how she was feeling, not with the baby. The smile dropped off her face.

They went home soon after.

She left him alone that day, and he didn't come to her that night. Save for a hand skimming along her lower back that evening, Mr. Todd was in his own head.

She lay awake that night with tears slipping down her face.

The next morning she dressed herself in a simple grey gown, a red petticoat hidden under the self-striped skirt just in case... in case she had cause to be happy. "Brought you some breakfast, dear," she said, her voice light. He was staring out the window at the busy streets of London.

She took a deep breath. "Mr. T, can I ask you a question?"

"What?" he said, not ungently.

"What did your Lucy look like?" she asked, her hands on her hips. When he didn't answer, she said even more gently, "Can't really remember, can you?"

"She had yellow hair," was all Mr. Todd said.

Mrs. Lovett came to stand just behind him, her insides positively marinating in fear and love. "You've got to leave this all behind, you know," she said softly. "She's gone." His soft exhalation didn't escape her, and she pressed on. "Life is for the alive, my dear." She steeled herself. "We could have a life, us two. Maybe not like I dreamed. Maybe not like you remember. But we could get by."

There. She had said it. She couldn't look at him.

But he turned, and oh, he was looking at her, right in her eyes, his expression open and almost... she felt her heart expand all over again, as she had when she had first realized it was him.

And then the sailor.

And because Eleanor Lovett was nothing if not practical, she did not burst into tears then and there, though the heavy, dragging pain at her heart forced her lips downward too. She knew that Johanna would trump her.

"Fetch the boy," Mr. Todd said, having sent the sailor on his way with a foolproof plan.

"Don't you think you should leave the boy alone?" Mrs. Lovett asked, trying to stake her claim over the one thing she could. She loved the boy so, why involve him in this sordid business?

He whipped around to glare at her. She knew she could not win, and so she left.

With her last shred of composure, she went down the stairs to where Toby was scrubbing a table in the eating garden. "Toby, Mr. Todd needs you."

She locked the side door into the shop, and made it halfway across the shop before she felt the nausea take over. She vomited, hard, into a nearby bowl, normally used to mix dough. Gasping, she wiped her mouth and sobbed once. Taking up the bowl in shaking hands, she emptied it out the back window and set it aside to scrub. She rinsed her mouth with water and spat. Pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, she willed herself not to cry, this was merely a minor setback, it had to be, Johanna was surely more important--

This thought sobered her. Johanna, of whom her last memory was of a shining little baby girl, the baby Nellie Lovett had always wanted. She admitted to herself that she wanted to see the girl too, safe and sound and looking to her as a mother, perhaps to Toby as a brother. Oh, how she wanted a family. She had been alone all her life, forced to bear the arrangements of life with no regard for her feelings, whether she might be strong enough. She wanted a family. She wanted to be loved.

She had death and a maniac, and it was like a tragic joke played at her expense.


	5. Chapter Five: Ne Cadant In Obscurum

She found him pacing in the shop a few hours later, his eyes fixed on London below. She was holding a tray with tea on it (he hadn't come down for luncheon and she hadn't been up to cook it anyhow), and he'd turned from the window to look at her briefly. "Tea, Mr. Todd?" she asked, willing her voice to be steady.

In response he'd taken her by the arm, pulled her to him, and kissed her. She resisted for a long moment, but he was insistent and she wanted him, oh, she _wanted_ him. Had he taken what she'd said to heart? His mouth was robbing her of oxygen, of speech, so that when he backed her into his cot, pushing the voluminous layers of her dress up, she was powerless to say him nay. Not that she would have in any case.

He let out a grunt when she rolled him over and straddled his hips. Unfastening his trousers, for once she was in control. They both exhaled hard as she took him in hand and guided him inside. Mr. Todd stiffened, his eyes squeezing shut.

This was her desperate bid for love. She had submitted to him as a dutiful Victorian wife, had aided his schemes, and allowed him to familiarize himself with her in a way that no other man could have hoped to do. He knew what she looked like deep in the throes of climax, knew the workings of her body, her freckles and scars. He was inside her at all times, in all ways.

His fingers curled into the material of her bodice. Her corset was fastened in the front and he undid the laces with the same expertise he showed with razors. She slapped his hands away even as her dress came open. She would make him feel something, by God.

The moan he let out when she moved faster atop him told her she was succeeding. His mouth fell open and then suddenly, his teeth gritted. "Stop moving," he growled, his eyes flying open. He looked at her with a frown.

"Why?" she asked breathlessly, her body still heated.

In answer he pushed her off him and onto her back. "What," he began in a harsh tone, "is your agenda, woman?" He pinned her down. "What d'you think you're doing here?"

She looked up at him with wide, agitated eyes. "I-" she began, and had to swallow to get some saliva back in her mouth, "I thought... we've been... I- _ouch_!"

For the first time since he had had her on the baker's table when all this madness began, Mrs. Lovett cried out in something other than pleasure. "Mr. Todd!" she nearly shrieked when he shoved himself back inside her. Her fingers clawed into his arms. "Stop!"

"Oh, but we always!" Mr. Todd said, his lips stretching back in a demonic grin. "Oh, _Eleanor_, do you mean to tell me that all those many years ago you never thought about what it would be like to have Lucy's man?"

The accusation struck her mute and motionless. Then, a great rage rose up in her, borne on a tide of fear and hurt. She dug her fingers into his hair and pulled, eliciting a grunt of surprise from Mr. Todd. "How dare you!" she managed, her voice laced with pain. She gave a great heave and pushed him off her. She flew to her feet, yanking her skirts down around her. "You bastard, you vile piece of dog shite!"

Sprawled on the floor with his trousers undone, he looked almost helpless. Mrs. Lovett looked down on him with something akin to contempt, tinged with such love he winced. With a sneer she said slowly, silkily, "And you're a devil-cursed, shite-eating liar if you say you never looked at Eleanor Pearce and thought of things the Bible forbids." _Just like our entire existence_, she thought in passing.

He was on his feet, fastening his pants and looking at her with such fierce anger she was momentarily afraid. He saw the spark of fear in her eyes and struck.

"Devil-cursed I may be, and I may eat the shite you cook, Mrs. Lovett, but I am no liar." He got in her face, his eyes narrowed. "You think you can manipulate me with sex?" The word was spoken in almost a hiss. "That I've been doing as you say because you let me_ touch_ you? Did you think you had some sort of _control_?"

The spark ignited. Mrs. Lovett felt her breath constrict in her throat. She fought the shaking that sprung into her hands. "Control? Control?" She balled her hands into fists. "Control?" The last word was a threadbare whisper. "Control is the last thing I have possessed since you walked in my door." The worst part was, she really had thought she had some say in the course of her life. She turned from him, throwing her hands up in what felt like despair, had it not been steeped in such hope. "I... I have my reasons," she said finally. He could still bend.

"Your reasons are all forbidden by the Bible," Mr. Todd said softly. "What _would_ society think if they knew what was going on up here?" He put a hand on her breast, a vulgar gesture that she slapped away and then slapped his face for. "Oh-ho," he said, grasping her wrist hard. He gripped her arms with a force that made her cringe. "No, Eleanor, I haven't lied to you. Everything I have done to you has been no more than what I want. No more and no less. For," he said, "after all, who has stood by me in my enterprise more steadfastly than you? Devotion like that is born of love, surely." He looked straight into her eyes, and asked, with none of the scorn she was expecting, "Do you love me, Nell?"

The young barber with the black hair and the black eyes in his fine leather trench coat kissed her gently. _Yes, yes, yes,_ her younger self whispered back.

Mrs. Lovett spat at him and fled.

Downstairs, she inhaled three times, deeply, and steeled herself, lacing her dress with shaking fingers. There was much to be done, and Toby was nowhere to be found. The evening rush would begin, and she had to be prepared.

To console herself, she picked a particularly beautiful gown that Mr. Todd had not yet seen. It was a pale ivory color overlaid with black lace and embroidered intricately. Even the petticoat was a work of art, its edges cut like flower petals. She cinched herself tightly (thinking of the child that might be inside her the whole time), pushing her breasts as high as they would go. It was off-the-shoulder, a daring cut for a widow woman. She attempted to fix her hair, but she was still shaken, and abandoned the process. Straightening the ruffles of her skirt, all bordered with jet beads, she inspected her reflection. Dabbing just a touch of color onto her lips, she swallowed her turmoil. She had made more than a hundred pies for that night, expecting their usual rush.

Mrs. Lovett performed her usual cheery shopkeeper act that night on her own, sweeping between tables, filling flagons of ale, taking coins for payment, bringing pie after pie to the savage appetite of London. It was eating her alive now. A pound of flesh for a debt unpaid, and it was _her_ flesh. And to whom was the debt owed? Somehow, somewhere in her mind, she thought of the drooling beggar- woman she had thrown out of her shop more than once, the blonde and dirt-streaked woman who offered herself to the men of London for a few coins. She could almost see Lucy Barker standing by the gates of judgment, alongside St. Peter, her vacant eyes accusatory. "_My man, my child_," she would say.

"_The Devil's wife_." The epithet echoed in her mind as she said her goodbyes to her final customers. She brushed it aside and turned over her "Sold Out" sign, locking the door for the night. Collapsing into a chair by the fire in her drawing room, she picked up her copy of Petrach's sonnets and read until she dozed off. It had been a hard night, made harder by her swirling emotions, and her roiling stomach.

She was woken mid-snore by the sound of Toby's footfall at her doorway. Turning her head, she asked, "Where've you been, lad? We had quite the rush at dinner. Me poor bones is ready to drop." She noted somewhere vague in her mind that her speech was quite Cockney when she was tired.

"Mr. Todd sent me on an errand," the boy said, coming further into the room. "And then I stopped by the workhouse, just to take a look." He knelt beside her. "And I was thinking," he added. "But for you, I'd be there now. Or someplace worse." He smiled a little. "Seems like the good Lord sent you for me."

Mrs. Lovett smiled, looking at the handsome boy she'd be proud to call her son. "Oh, love," she said softly, "I feel much the same way."

"Listen to me, please," the boy said suddenly, earnestly. "You know there's nothing I wouldn't do for you."

Turning a bemused smile on her little lad, Mrs. Lovett cocked her head curiously, tiredly.

That smile dropped when Toby began, in a trembling voice, to air his suspicions about Mr. Todd. He spoke with the guileless honesty of a young son to his mother, and Mrs. Lovett felt her heart catch in her throat.

He had figured out some parts of it, and was reacting instinctually to the perpetual recalcitrance and violence of the barber. She'd thought he knew they were sleeping together; he had seen Mr. Todd touch her almost possessively more than once. She'd thought...

She attempted to distract him with the thought of toffees; children love sweets, she reasoned. He'd almost relaxed, when he caught sight of what was in her hand, and exclaimed, "That's Signor Pirelli's purse!"

"No, it's not!" Mrs. Lovett said immediately. "Just something Mr. T give me for my birthday."

But Toby was only more horrified. "That proves it!" he cried. "Come on, mum, we've got to go to the Beadle and get the law here-"

"Now, Toby dear, we'll have no more of this foolish chatter," she said, keeping her voice light, and her smile easy, guiding him to the sofa.

Forcing the lump in her throat back down, she gathered the boy in her arms and sat him down next to her. "How could you think such a thing of Mr. T?" she asked him, her voice a thread. "He's been so good to us. You just sit right here with me."

She lied to him, softly, brokenly. She told him nothing could harm him so long as she was around. She called him pet names, spoke gently to him.

And then she took him down into the bakehouse, locking her boy in with the bodies and the truth. Leaning against the door, she took three very deep breaths, stemming the tears that were spilling from her eyes. She had to give him up if she wanted Mr. Todd. It was necessary. Though she had added him into her little fantasies of her life by the sea, she could do without if it meant Mr. Todd was hers.

But how unfair! That she should have to give up her chance to be a mother twice! That she should have to sacrifice a child's life for her happiness. Men she didn't care about; they were commoner than rats and they were all louts. Every last bleeding one of them, even Mr. Todd whom she loved so desperately, was a stupid brute with no care other than the satiation of their urges.

She was a vessel filled with the sorrows of Mr. Todd, of Benjamin Barker, of herself, and it was wearing her threadbare.

But she went straight up the stairs to the barbershop, alerted the pale man, who came immediately outside with her. "I've got him locked in the bakehouse, but if he escapes he'll go to the law." She was shuddering, trembling with fear now that she had effectively cut off her sadness and regret.

"He won't escape," the barber said, more matter-of-factly than threateningly.

"I don't know, Mr. T-" she said, her voice unsteady.

She watched the change in Mr. Todd's face with confusion; he blanched, and she spun around to face the Beadle, whose ugly face and sudden presence startled her into a gasp. "Excuse me, sir," she said, shaken. "You gave me a fright."

"Not my intention, good madam, I assure you," the Beadle said unctuously. "I am here, however, on official business. There have been some complaints about your chimney. They say that at night, it is something most foul." He looked oddly gleeful. "Public welfare and the general well-being naturally being my duty, I'm afraid," here he drew out a small golden snuffbox, and took two generous sniffs. "I'm going to have to take a look," he sneezed wetly, vigorously, "at your bakehouse." Then he smiled, pronouncement achieved.

"But of course, sir," Mr. Todd said immediately, accommodatingly. "But first why don't you come upstairs and let me pamper you?" _With the sharp edge of the razor_, Mrs. Lovett thought. She caught his eye and nodded once, shortly. She did not spare a thought for the boy down in the bakehouse any longer; he would have to go if this was all to go the way Mr. Todd planned. Perhaps she might save his life in the process, she didn't know. But all had boiled down to this; Mr. Todd would succeed, and they would leave London behind, and she would have what she wanted at last.

She wondered briefly if she had lost her mind.

She did not witness the death of the Beadle, nor did she hear the terrible wet thud his body made as it hit the stone floor of the bakehouse, his brain spilling out in a red gush. She did not see Toby's horror, nor hear his screams of "Let me out! Let me out!" Nor could she hear his anguished thoughts of her betrayal of him.

She waited, waited, waited with her hands wringing themselves into painful knots. She wanted to hurry down into the basement to deal with the body she knew would be down there, and she was sure it would be over soon...

When Mr. Todd came down to her, his face was like thunder . He nearly pushed her down into the staircase, growling, "The boy saw."

To her dismay the bakehouse was empty when they burst in, and so she followed Mr. Todd into the sewer, the only place the boy could have logically gone. Holding her skirt out of the dank water, she called his name. "Nothing's gonna harm you, darling," she said soothingly. "Not while I'm around."

Mr. Todd's furious calls of "Toby!", playing a dark counterpoint to Mrs. Lovett's gentle platitudes, convinced the shaking boy that the exact opposite was true. They went past him without seeing him, as if in his fear he had suddenly developed the ability to make himself invisible. He prayed, his eyes squeezed shut.

Rats swarmed as Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd crept through the sewer. He gave up finally, with a disgusted growl, and stormed out of the drains, leaving Mrs. Lovett to get herself out of the stinking hole on her own. He had a job to do. She let him go.

Mr. Todd was so blinded with rage, so murderously bent on avenging his past, so deaf to the words of love spoken to him that he paid attention to nothing. He did not, could not know that his young daughter was hiding in his shop. He did not, could not know that the sing-songy beggar woman whose throat he so dispassionately slashed was the woman he'd sworn his love to. He didn't know, couldn't know, that it was his own life he was destroying like a candle burning at both ends.

Mrs. Lovett waited. She waited, and waited, and allowed tears to slide down her cheeks as she waited for the end of her nightmare. And in the meantime, while she waited, she made herself useful. She took herself back down to her hellish bakehouse. Mrs. Lovett moved to get to the body of the judge, and screamed in terror when the judge's fingers curled into her skirt. "Die!" she screeched, terrified. "Don't you ever die?" It had to be over, enough was enough- she yanked her skirt out of the clutching fingers, and her eyes fell on the still form of an unexpected body. The light from the roaring of the fire in her oven threw a shivering glow on the face of Lucy, her archrival (all cousinly affection forgotten in the stress and grief of dealing with her broken man), the destruction of her dreams, she dropped the judge and began to drag the body

The bakehouse door slammed open. "Why did you scream?" demanded Mr. Todd, who looked absolutely demonic. There was blood all over him, spattered on his face and his clothing, his razor hanging from his hand.

"Oh," Mrs. Lovett said hastily, breathlessly. "He was clutching onto my dress but he's finished now." She turned her attention back to dragging Lucy towards the oven, she had to get Lucy gone-

"I'll take care of it," Mr. Todd said, coming towards her. "Open the door." Mrs. Lovett didn't move. "Open the door, I said," he snapped, pushing her towards the oven.

She had no choice. Mrs. Lovett went for the oven, unlocking the heavy door and watching in fear and sadness as the shuddering light of the fire was thrown onto the still form of her cousin.

Mr. Todd glanced over at her and then followed her gaze. He seemed to freeze when he saw the beggar woman's pale gold hair. As if he could not believe it, he bent and pushed the wild strands out of her face. "Don't I know you, she said," he murmured his voice a thread.

She had a sudden flash of a lost little boy crying as he looked down at Lucy's still form, his body seeming to lose all of its erectness, its tautness. He dropped to his knees beside her, nearly whimpering, "Lucy, Lucy." He gathered her to him, the poor, weak specimen of humanity, and Mrs. Lovett felt her heart spasm painfully. Her throat closed.

"You knew she lived," he said in a threadbare voice, lifting his eyes to her.

"I was only thinking of you." It was out of her mouth before she could stop it, and it was, at last, the whole truth.

"You lied to me," he said, his voice laced with pain so raw she flinched. _Yes_, her heart said. _I lied. I was only thinking of you. _It was almost a relief, a weight off her chest.

But he looked so hurt, so ravaged that she had to soothe him, make him realize that she did it for love, and love could heal everything. "No, no," she said, her voice pitiful even to her own ears. "Not lied at all. No. I never lied." She slid towards him, desperate for forgiveness. "I said she took a poison, she did, never said that she died-" Her words rushed together in her haste for absolution. "She lived, but it left her weak in the head, all she did for months was just lie there in bed, poor thing, I-"

Her heart was hammering. She felt her body tense as Mr. Todd got to his feet, his body unfolding in a lean, threatening loom. "You're a bloody wonder," he said softly, holding out his arms. She backed away from him. "Eminently practical and yet appropriate, as always." His voice devolved into silk, sliding against her eardrums and her skin with the same liquid grace that had enraptured the young Eleanor Pearce all those years ago. "As you said repeatedly, there's little point in dwelling on the past."

Even as she backed away, she felt an upsurge of wild hope. "Now, come here, my love," he invited. "Nothing to fear, my love."

"Do you mean it?" she asked warily, her fingers curled into her skirt. "Everything I did, I swear I thought it was only for the best, believe me-" She came towards him, even though he was covered in blood. "Can we... still be married?" And she was swept into a macabre waltz, her beloved stained with the blood of his past, finally fulfilled. She was relieved that it was over, since she had long since resigned herself to the fact that he would not stop until the judge was dead.

"The history of the world is learning forgiveness," he murmured to her as they spun. "Learn forgiveness and try to forget. Isn't that what you always said?"

Mrs. Lovett smiled up at him, wild hope and relief coursing through her. "Life is for the alive, my dear," he said, echoing her earlier words to him. "So let's keep living it-"

She was repeating what he was saying, yes, he had forgiven her, yes, she would have everything she wanted, finally, finally, _finally- _

She felt the trajectory of her body before she realized what was happening, before she felt the lick of the flame against her skin, searing into her body with a white-hot pain, pain, _pain!_

Fire is the slowest death, since the body cooks from the outside in. She saw, her vision clouded and seared by fire, Mr. Todd's eyes in the vent on the door, reflecting the fire. He looked like the devil, and she was the devil's wife.

He shut the little door on her pyre, his eyes stinging with tears. Surely this was the end. Now he had no one to love him. No Nellie, no Lucy, no Johanna. It had come to this.

In Benjamin Barker's very nature there was an aversion to death. He had been the most pacific of men, avoiding making anyone uncomfortable lest it lead to confrontation. Benjamin Barker would have wept to see the piteous end of his wife and her beautiful, lively cousin. The man Sweeney Todd was only relieved. Relieved and exhausted and not at all as triumphant as he'd wanted to be, he knelt next to his poor wife, gathering her in his arms.

He never moved, even when he heard the boy sneaking behind him, but to lift his chin. At last.

It was by his decision that this was done. He could have killed the boy easily, thrown him in to burn with Mrs. Lovett. Instead he got what he wanted all along: to be at peace.

The blood, which had boiled and pounded and rushed through him in his frenzy to avenge his terrible, broken life, seeped onto Lucy and onto the floor, staining the stone. The flames in the oven roared, dissolving Eleanor Lovett into ash, and the faint sound of the Westminster abbey bells played a soft requiem behind them.


End file.
